Video: Watch These Guys Hack an Electric Skateboard

When people think of hacking, they mainly worry about things like having their identity stolen. But what if a hacker could force you to face plant on the sidewalk?

Independent cybersecurity researchers Richard Healey and Mike Ryan have demonstrated hackers can do just that to anyone riding an electric skateboard. 

The boosted skateboard generally goes at speeds of 22 mph and is controlled by a handheld wireless device that connects to the board via Bluetooth and allows the rider to speed up and slow down the board.

Healey and Ryan conducted tests and discovered they can jam the original signal and reverse engineer the protocol to take over the skateboard and do a number of things, such as stopping the board and causing an unsuspecting rider serious injury. 

"The time between when we jam the Bluetooth signal and when we replace it with our own malicious signal, instructing the board to do nasty things, is so short that you wouldn't have time to think anything," Healey said. "You would be on the ground before you knew it."

While electronic skateboards aren't a common mode of transport, as more things around us connect to the Internet, people become more vulnerable to hackers in new and potentially dangerous ways.

To see the hacking in action, check out the video below from Wired: 

(Image via Superlime/ Shutterstock.com)