Mechanical hack
Bananas up the exhaust pipe - it worked for Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop.
Now car hackers can bust in through your motor's DAB RADIO
Car brakes and other critical systems can be hacked via car infotainment systems, security researchers at NCC Group have revealed. The ingenious hack, demonstrated in an off-road environment, works by sending attack data via digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio signals. This is similar to a hack that allowed security …
-
-
-
Friday 24th July 2015 16:08 GMT nematoad
... you need something like a computer to stabilize the car and improve its fuel efficiency"
Stabilise the car? Hold on, this isn't a fly-by-wire fighter jet you know. Those are deliberately made unstable so as to increase their manouverability and cannot, in most cases, be flown without a computer intermediary.
But a car? That should be stable, have all wheels firmly connected to the ground and be able to go around corners in safety. Unless of course it's a Reliant Robin.
As to fuel efficiency, I don't know, that must surely depend on the driving style of the driver and road conditions. Maybe an engine ECU will help but fuel efficiency must be seen as a moving target.
-
Saturday 25th July 2015 22:39 GMT Neil Alexander
Re: "this isn't a fly-by-wire fighter jet you know"
In modern cars, it is very much drive-by-wire, especially in cars where stability control (ESC) is standard, or have any optional features along the lines of cruise control (or the adaptive variant), adjustable speed limiter, lane keeping assistance or any number of other features that modify the throttle, brake or steering input in any way.
Not to mention that ABS is computer-controlled, as are TCS and TVC (on cars that have them), and so are plenty of other safety features (whether you realise the car is doing them or not). Sure, you don't need these things because these systems are technically non-essential - you could own a car that has none of them - but if I'm about to be involved in a potential accident, then I welcome all the computerised help I can get to minimise the impact.
Finally, a number of parameters to actually keep the engine itself functional are typically regulated by a computer too - things like idle revs, fuel/air mixture and operating temperature. That's partly why modern engines are so smooth and actually work properly in extreme cold, extreme warm, etc.
-
-
-
-
Friday 24th July 2015 11:04 GMT David Roberts
DAB Radio?
What nobody seems to have mentioned so far is that the DAB radio is unlikely to be a discreet component.
Mobile phones have had music players and radios integrated for decades.
So, isn't it likely that there is one big tablet computer acting as the central console which can do everything from playing tunes to changing profiles from economy to sport?
Which in turn needs access to all major components? Including turning off stability control which messes with throttle and braking. What about the collision avoidance systems?
So policing the bus a little better may well make no difference at all. Full access is required by the central computer. This computer should be at the heart of the security design.
-
-
Friday 24th July 2015 12:23 GMT Unicornpiss
Not unexpected...
But what people fail to realize with the Jeep hack is that they had to rewrite the firmware first to allow this to happen. Still, it is a vulnerability and "infotainment" systems should be firewalled from the rest of the CAN bus (or whatever networking strategy each automaker is using)
Another problem is that with increasing complexity, you're always going to have vulnerabilities that no one could have foreseen. It's up to the automakers to acknowledge faults and patch them, the same as any computer hardware or software purveyor. At least Fiat-Chrysler is working with the white hats that came up with the exploit and a patch has been produced.
I remember on one of my first cars, which had no electronics other than the radio, there was a combination of switches you could turn on that would create an unintended ground path and cause the wipers to stutter across the windshield in time with the turn signals. And this was a pretty simple purely electromechanical system with an unexpected flaw. What do you expect with millions of lines of code to debug on a modern vehicle?
-
Friday 24th July 2015 13:42 GMT earl grey
yes, yes, but....
If you don't let your underpowered measly little engine talk to the radio and broadcast those nice rumbly sounds as if you've got a real motor under your bonnet... it just HAS to talk to the radio; even when it's turned off...yeah, that's the ticket.
Oh, and some of the new vehicles that will stop for anything in front of them...they're already all set up to assist carjackers and kidnappers... just walk in front...car stops. simples..
-
Friday 24th July 2015 15:37 GMT John Styles
As I have said before:
1. You can't trust computers
2. Everything is a computer
3. Run!!!!!
Surely if you had described this scenario to someone 30 (say) years ago, you would have been a prime candidate for a visit to the men in white coats. I am still a tiny bit dubious.
With my previous car which had a 3rd party ISO DAB radio, the local Skoda dealer blamed the EMS warning I was getting on the car radio sending errors to the bus. I didn't actually believe them at the time (and still don't, but maybe, just maybe, I was wrong) - I went to another garage who fixed it without blaming the car radio.
-
-
-
Sunday 26th July 2015 17:55 GMT Mpeler
Re: Steganography?
DAB? You mean "Something For The Weekend" (column). Maybe the BOFH will also show up on the CAN bus (CAN'T bus?)...
Digital Radio is also being foisted upon us over in Germany, and the, erm, takeup has been less than enthusiastic. AM was brilliant for emergency transmissions, camping and travelling (due to the better DX possibilities), and, though relatively low fidelity, the reception slowly got worse, as opposed to dropping off as if it were the victim of a steep notch filter.
How in the world are we going to use our Phillips EE8 and EE20 Radio Kits if there's no AM anymore, sigh...
-
Biting the hand that feeds IT
