The theory belongs to former US official Richard Clarke

Jun 25, 2013 11:32 GMT  ·  By

Journalist Michael Hastings has died in a single-vehicle crash, when he reportedly drove his 2013 Mercedes C250 into a tree in Los Angeles on June 18.

At the time of his accident, he was allegedly working on a big story, and the FBI was investigating him.

Hastings’ mysterious death has sparked a lot of controversy, and several conspiracy theories have emerged. One of them is that the car wreck in which the reporter died might have been the result of a cyber attack.

Former US National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke has told The Huffington Post that he’s not a “conspiracy guy.”

However, he believes that the accident could have been caused by a car cyber attack orchestrated by the intelligence agencies Hastings was investigating.

“What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,” Clarke said.

“You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it's not that hard. So if there were a cyber attack on the car – and I'm not saying there was, – I think whoever did it would probably get away with it,” he told the publication.

The former official believes the publicly available evidence suggests that the incident is a result of a cyber attack. However, he says it’s difficult to prove it.

Clarke notes that it’s unlikely that the Los Angeles Police Department possesses the expertise to discover if this was really a cyber attack.

“I think you'd probably need the very best of the U.S. government intelligence or law enforcement officials to discover it,” he said.