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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-can't-get-there-from-here dept.

In the year 2026, at rush hour, your self-driving car abruptly shuts down right where it blocks traffic. You climb out to see gridlock down every street in view, then a news alert on your watch tells you that hackers have paralysed all Manhattan traffic by randomly stranding internet-connected cars.

Flashback to July 2019, the dawn of autonomous vehicles and other connected cars, and physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Multiscale Systems, Inc. have applied physics in a new study to simulate what it would take for future hackers to wreak exactly this widespread havoc by randomly stranding these cars. The researchers want to expand the current discussion on automotive cyber-security, which mainly focuses on hacks that could crash one car or run over one pedestrian, to include potential mass mayhem.

They warn that even with increasingly tighter cyber defences, the amount of data breached has soared in the past four years, but objects becoming hackable can convert the rising cyber threat into a potential physical menace.

Hackers could use connected cars to gridlock whole cities

[Source]: Georgia Tech


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  • (Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday July 30 2019, @07:58PM (9 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday July 30 2019, @07:58PM (#873246) Journal

    We need to pull out the venn diagrams here, Georgia Tech is using some backwards language. I know anti-intellectuals are going to hate this comment but someone has to do it and I know for many hear we are like yeah yeah in a sense battered down 'let them fart all over our culture whatever.' At any rate correct me if I'm wrong. I just get hung up on semantics sometimes because the definitions of words are for some reason on my mind.

    A hacker is anyone who breaks technology in order to understand it better. This motivation will not have anyone breaking into cars that belong to anyone other than themselves or whoever they are working for. You cannot break into something without cracking into it. Burglers don't hack a safe, they crack it.

    Most crackers just want to steal valuables like data and diamonds and the panties of japanese women, but some crackers have worse plans. These are sabateures who actually want to cause damage and all manner of other objectives.

    If someone were a hacker and a sabateur, then they might do something like 'gridlock entire cities'. But the sabateur would also have to be a cracker to break into someone else's system.

    So draw the hacker circle, then the cracker circle inside of it, and then inside of those two draw the sabateur circle.

    Then write the word 'terrorism' on a sheet of paper and light it on fire and pee on it because it is a worthless undefinable word used to destroy language itself and justify murder. Terror is the same word as fear and fearism is not a word and it means the same thing.

    I find cracking and sabatoge tedious, ineffective and morally bad.

    The real trouble with this is, it's like, 'hackers could attack cars' but it's entirely presented to sound like only random Bain-archtypes might do something like this.

    Like the fbi wouldn't shut down the cars of peace activists randomly, or the police wouldn't just shut down a car they were chasing. Like the mafia and all manner of international spies wouldn't all develop their own tools to be able to exert power.

    They don't want a personal computer, and it appears also they don't want a personal car. Which is to say, the New Paradigm is using massively complex technology which you have nearly zero control over and trusting cloud software as a service to babysit you or torture you, depending on how naughty or nice santa and all of his reindeer thinks you've been all year.

    But yeah if russia can wipe their balls all over our election machines, they can shut down 10 random toyota's at key locations across the city and ensure

    Has anyone out there heard of a honda crv main computer shutting down randomly before frying? All three mechanics I took mine to could not explain it or fathom a cause, and they had to replace mine twice in 2017. It was expensive and in every way undermined my ability to live. So I left the country and moved someplace I can ride the bus and maybe there is no such thing as a thought criminal.

    Do you think I want to buy another car with fancy transitors in it, much less one with 'networked computers'? The government is 10x more of a threat in this situation than 'hackers.' (but the government is just another circle in the hacker venn diagram, with its own inner circles of course...)

  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:22PM (1 child)

    by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:22PM (#873264)

    A hacker is anyone who breaks technology in order to understand it better.

    I'm having trouble with "breaks". I consider myself somewhat an occasional hacker, meaning I like understanding how things work, possibly doing something to make them work differently, but it does not necessarily mean breaking, damaging, or modifying in any way.

    Re. Honda problem: you need much more detailed analysis of the problem. Module replacement has bugged me for a long time. I don't consider that a repair, unless the module really failed of its own accord. In your case it sounds like a wiring short, or a solenoid or motor has bad windings, drawing too much current from the computer, frying a driver transistor. It'd be nice if they current-limited the circuit, but I doubt they bothered.

    Auto mechanics should have better diagnostic tools, but it would cost them more, and they would bill less. In your case I can envision a diagnostic tool that would plug in to the harness in place of the computer, test all of the sensors and actuators (motors, solenoids, etc.), and look for shorts.

    • (Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday July 31 2019, @08:01PM

      by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Wednesday July 31 2019, @08:01PM (#873705) Journal

      I see what you're saying. I think what you are describing is studying a system, reading its manuals and normal use. You can certainly do a lot of things that way, but you will not get any free long distance calls :)

      Since you asked.

      It started a month after I got the vehicle, 2010 model, this was 2016. I was going about 35 miles an hour in a mostly empty 4 lane stoplight road. The carfax had nothing like this on it, otherwise drove exactly as I wanted.

      From that point on, it shut down essentially completely randomly until the computer was destroyed twice, it wouldn't start at all and was locked in place. The radio would go out but the dashlights would be on. The car would be rolling but the speedometer would say 0. One of the red all wheel drive lights came on. It happened at all speeds and weather conditions and only one time on the interstate highway when I had just left kansas city for good. Then I drove for thousands of miles with no shutdowns.

      Then when I was delivering pizza in issaqua wa on 11-23-17 it shutdown in snow on highland going up hill in traffic. In snow. A car could have really slammed me from behind, I stopped a middle land of traffic. Had to be towed.

      If you think the mechanics are incompetent, call them up. I spent nearly 3000 dollars on this and it threatened my life, do you not think I asked these questions? 3 master technicians, kansas, missouri, washington. Christian Brothers, Oneal Honda, Integrity Automotive. Those people are not jokers, they have the honda machines, they are trained master technicians.

      They could not explain it, do you really think you can?

      Do you really think I should be risking my life driving a car in the united states after that? Someone call a journalist, I would love to tell them about the harassment I experienced in the United States. Heck, call Honda.

      Things are a lot worse than you think. Journalists are not doing their jobs, the cops are getting away with everything. But I would also like you to acknowledge the risk I am taking by writing about the things I do in clear text on the internet, and help me hire a bodyguard plz thanks.

      Good talk. Thanks in advance for listening, anyone who did. Having your car computer disintegrate for no explainable reason is a truly infuriating experience and you never quite regain your trust in vehicles. Or that your government is good and that the police are protecing you rather than attacking you in an extremely douchey gaslighting manner.

      But if you want to blame it on the mechanics tools and don't think a peace and privacy and bds supporter could have their car computer destroyed by satellite or who knows what in america in 2019, sure, you're responsible though for where you place your bets and things are getting a little hairy for those of us with our necks out.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:27PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:27PM (#873266)

    Back in the mid 1970s when solid state electronic ignition transitioned (from points and condenser) some cars would stall on hwy 5 in SoCal under the high voltage lines at San Onofre nuclear power plant.
    Hackers... If you type a random string of letters (or manipulate them) in the URL bar and gain access to something you're not suppose to, is it hacking or chance?

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:00PM (2 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:00PM (#873283) Homepage
      Neither hacking nor chance. There is a negotiation between the client making the request and the server. A request is just a request, nothing more. If a server decides that it wants to serve you the content addressed by your request, then that is the server's choice, based on what it was programmed/configured to do. If it decides you can access that resource, then by definition you are allowed to access that resource.

      Alas no court sees things this way, it's almost as if courts aren't staffed by people who've spent 3 decades in the field of IT.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:18PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:18PM (#873319)

        So the same logic applies to a combination lock on a safe full of gold?

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:14AM

          by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:14AM (#873427) Journal

          So the same logic applies to a combination lock on a safe full of gold?

          If you put the voice activated safe door on the border of your property facing the street, and there is a mechanism inside the safe to throw a gold bar into the street when you call out a specific number, then yes, standing on the street calling out numbers is legal.
          You might be able to argue that taking the gold bar was theft, but the court is still going to laugh at you.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:57PM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:57PM (#873281) Homepage
    > Burglers don't hack a safe, they crack it.

    What if they used a hacksaw?
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:31PM (1 child)

      by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:31PM (#873293)

      What if they used a hacksaw?

      Then they saw it. (ouch)

      --
      Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:14AM (#873428)

        > What if they used a hacksaw?

        Then they aren't very smart, and/or have time on their hands (and sore arms). Hacksaws have fine teeth, not suitable for cutting thick steel because the chips load up in the space between the teeth. Thus, use of a cutting torch. thermite, or other faster cutting method.