Uber hires researchers who found vulnerabilities in Chrysler cars

Uber has offered a job to the two security researchers who previously showed that the brakes on Chrysler cars can be disengaged remotely. The researchers will start working on autonomous cars for the company from Tuesday.

They are Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, who worked for Twitter and the security company IOActive respectively. They will be part of Uber from next week, Reuters news agency reported.

Miller and Valasek join Uber’s research center in Pittsburgh, which opened in February. The dozens of employees at the Uber Advanced Technologies Center look at how they can improve vehicle safety and autonomy. They partner with Carnegie Mellon University.

The two researchers received worldwide attention in July for discovering vulnerabilities in the onboard system of recent Chrysler cars. They showed that attackers over the internet, for example, can suddenly switch on or off the brakes. Fiat Chrysler therefore recalled 1.4 million cars.