In the meantime, fun!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/07/24/hackers-reveal-nasty-new-car-attacks-with-me-behind-the-wheel-video/

Stomping on the brakes of a 3,500-pound Ford Escape that refuses to stop–or even slow down–produces a unique feeling of anxiety. In this case it also produces a deep groaning sound, like an angry water buffalo bellowing somewhere under the SUV's chassis. The more I pound the pedal, the louder the groan gets–along with the delighted cackling of the two hackers sitting behind me in the backseat.

Luckily, all of this is happening at less than 5mph. So the Escape merely plows into a stand of 6-foot-high weeds growing in the abandoned parking lot of a South Bend, Ind. strip mall that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have chosen as the testing grounds for the day's experiments, a few of which are shown in the video below. (When Miller discovered the brake-disabling trick, he wasn't so lucky: The soccer-mom mobile barreled through his garage, crushing his lawn mower and inflicting $150 worth of damage to the rear wall.)

"Okay, now your brakes work again," Miller says, tapping on a beat-up MacBook connected by a cable to an inconspicuous data port near the parking brake. I reverse out of the weeds and warily bring the car to a stop. "When you lose faith that a car will do what you tell it to do," he adds after we jump out of the SUV, "it really changes your whole view of how the thing works."

This fact, that a car is not a simple machine of glass and steel but a hackable network of computers, is what Miller and Valasek have spent the last year trying to demonstrate. Miller, a 40-year-old security engineer at Twitter, and Valasek, the 31-year-old director of security intelligence at the Seattle consultancy IOActive, received an $80,000-plus grant last fall from the mad-scientist research arm of the Pentagon known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to root out security vulnerabilities in automobiles.

[Doktor Howl]

 

[Pæs]

an inconspicuous data port near the parking brake

WHY?

[Suu]

You think those USBs are to charge your iPhone? Think again.

[Pæs]

Whose idea was it to network ANYTHING the user can access to the FUCKING BRAKES, either directly or indirectly?

[Pæs]

For the record, this is the exact thing I think of when I read "cars will be able to communicate with each other as they pass one another on the street".

Really? That sounds like an attack vector for the best botnet ever!

[Doktor Howl]

For the record, this is the exact thing I think of when I read "cars will be able to communicate with each other as they pass one another on the street".

Really? That sounds like an attack vector for the best botnet ever!

I have a helmet.  I'm fine.
I have a helmet.  I'm fine.
I have a helmet.  I'm fine.

[Pæs]

For the record, this is the exact thing I think of when I read "cars will be able to communicate with each other as they pass one another on the street".

Really? That sounds like an attack vector for the best botnet ever!

I have a helmet.  I'm fine.
I have a helmet.  I'm fine.
I have a helmet.  I'm fine.

You're on the right track. On your way to the restaurant. You're going to love the restaur... No. Don't look outside. Look at the GPS. That's your car, there. On the way to dinner. That's you. That's the real you. On your way to the restaurant. You're on the right track.

[Left]

Drive by wire meets drive-by-wtf...



This is paranoia and whiskey talking, can you see the government offing people by hacking their cars?

My paranoid side wonders about those small plane crashes that Wellstone and Leland were in...

[Pæs]

This is paranoia and whiskey talking, can you see the government offing people by hacking their cars?

I can't see the government being morally opposed to it but when you're the government you tend to just kill people and then crash their car later.

What I can see, depending on the accessibility of the ports and how the various systems are networked is sophisticated car viruses taking people hostage or otherwise blackmailing them for profit.

Your handsfree kit makes a three way call between yourself, the attacker and a loved one and asks you to confirm whether or not the brakes are working and what speed you are travelling at and then demands an immediate ransom from the loved one, etc. Your imagination is the limit.

[Doktor Howl]

This is paranoia and whiskey talking, can you see the government offing people by hacking their cars?

No.

*checks the sky for FLYING DEATH ROBOTS*

No.

[Left]

This is paranoia and whiskey talking, can you see the government offing people by hacking their cars?

No.

*checks the sky for FLYING DEATH ROBOTS*

No.

Yeah, I figured I was just being a drunk asshole.  NEED MOAR!

[Pæs]

I would love to see a revenue gathering virus which makes speedometers constantly display your speed as just enough less than it is to trip speed cameras everywhere but perform perfectly when you try to correct this with recalibration.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is paranoia and whiskey talking, can you see the government offing people by hacking their cars?

No.

*checks the sky for FLYING DEATH ROBOTS*

No.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Betcha there's been a handshake agreement between automakers and the NSA for years. You want to market your shitty-fuel-economy cars in the US? No problem...