“Dad, can I have the code for the Porsche?”
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“Dad, can I have the code for the Porsche?”
Mr Justice Birss has granted an injunction against the University of Birmingham’s computer science lecturer, Flavio Garcia, to stop him disclosing in an academic paper, the secret algorithm that allows a car to verify the identity of the car’s ignition key.
In a case brought in the UK by the Porsche, Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini brands, the defendants Garcia and two other international computer cryptologists argued that their aim was to improve security for everyone, not to give criminals a helping hand. However, the judge ruled against the academic’s right to publish their paper on the grounds that it would facilitate car crime and enable the theft of potentially millions of valuable vehicles.