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Ross Anderson in the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory asks some questions about whether durable goods such as cars can be Internet-connected and yet provide sufficient privacy and safety. It's not a deep discussion but it does raise a few other pertainent questions.
Perhaps the biggest challenge will be durability. At present we have a hard time patching a phone that's three years old. Yet the average age of a UK car at scrappage is about 14 years, and rising all the time; cars used to last 100,000 miles in the 1980s but now keep going for nearer 200,000. As the embedded carbon cost of a car is about equal to that of the fuel it will burn over its lifetime, we just can't afford to scrap cars after five years, as do we laptops.
Meters and medical devices are two more examples of hardware that can cause great harm when control of the integrated software is taken over by malfeasants.
Source : Making security sustainable.
and Making Security Sustainable: Can there be an Internet of durable goods? (warning for PDF)
(Score: 2, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Thursday March 08 2018, @09:28AM (3 children)
Just don't. I have updates disabled and I have accrued around 50 update request on my phone. The old rule was: software should improve with every new update. That rule has changed to the opposite at least on the commercial side. This is why I am not interested in updates as I do not expect improved functionality.
For a car, updates are certainly expected to follow the same path. However, critical safety updates - the equivalent to phone-app-vulnerabilities - would require updating. I have no intention to purchase a car that does automatic updates that cannot be user-controlled. This would mean to be put under the total control of the vendor, by extension the goverment and by futher extension criminals.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 08 2018, @12:17PM (2 children)
I am of the strong belief that 95% of those "updates" are related to new DRM enforcement agents.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 08 2018, @01:51PM (1 child)
I worked intimately with Adobe Flash for a few months in 2013, got to know each and every update, what it was supposed to do, what it actually did with respect to our products, etc. And, your belief is correct, at least 95% of Adobe Flash updates in that period were playing whack-a-mole with video pirates doing things like watching BBC content from out-of-licensed-region terminals.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday March 09 2018, @09:48AM
I sure had a feeling it was the whack-a-mole, because it seemed every time I got a system upgrade, there would be some other program I would now have to install the latest version of before I regained functionality, that is, if it would.
I blew the proverbial fuse when Microsoft put out that FTDI chip bricking update. I had to go through every design I had that involved that FTDI chip and re-lay it out to a CH340.
This is just the way highly paid men think, and one has to design around them in order to build a robust product. For me, that meant abandoning FTDI and going to a Chinese design.
Just because FTDI and Microsoft will stoop to this kind of thing does not mean I will.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]