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As the two hackers remotely toyed with the air-conditioning, radio, and windshield wipers, I mentally congratulated myself on my courage under pressure. That’s when they cut the transmission.
Immediately my accelerator stopped working. As I frantically pressed the pedal and watched the RPMs climb, the Jeep lost half its speed, then slowed to a crawl. This occurred just as I reached a long overpass, with no shoulder to offer an escape. The experiment had ceased to be fun.
At that point, the interstate began to slope upward, so the Jeep lost more momentum and barely crept forward. Cars lined up behind my bumper before passing me, honking. I could see an 18-wheeler approaching in my rearview mirror. I hoped its driver saw me, too, and could tell I was paralyzed on the highway.
[Ed. addition follows]
See also coverage at The Register Jeep drivers: Install this security patch right now – or prepare to DIE:
The full details of the hack are still private, but it relies on the uConnect cellular network; since 2009, Chrysler cars have included hardware to connect to this network to reach the internet. The two researchers have demonstrated that a canny hacker can use the uConnect system to get wireless access to major components of a car's controls, and potentially crash it remotely with no one being any the wiser. The flaw has existed in the system since 2013.
Miller says the hack will work on recent Fiat Chrysler motors – such as Ram, Durango, and Jeep models. The pair disclosed the flaws to the manufacturer so that a patch could be prepared and distributed before their Black Hat tell-all. The fix is supposed to stop miscreants from accessing critical systems via the cellular network, a protection mechanism you would have expected in place on day one, week one.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday July 22 2015, @11:37AM
Computer engineers are a fiction.
There was a turf war in the 80s over where to put these "computer things" at uni, and the engineering depts attempt was to create the CE which was kind of an EE minus the analog and RF and plus a couple programming classes. The kind of grad more likely to write microcontroller code than web back end code. They did not remove control theory. Basically an engineer who knows ohms law and assembly language and bode stability plots. Note that if you suffer thru an EE you're probably only a year or so away from a CS double major anyway.
I googled it this morning and it turned out not to be as successful as they hoped it would be in the 80s. Looks like the math departments pretty much won after all WRT CS.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday July 22 2015, @01:25PM
CE/EE are mostly the same. The only difference is an EE studies more Analog and RF while the CE studies more Digital design. You can easily double major in those two without needed any unnecessary classes.