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Healey, who works on security for payments company Stripe, teamed up with fellow researcher Mike Ryan, who works on security for E-Bay, to examine his and other electric skateboards to see if they could be hacked. The result is an exploit they developed called FacePlant that can give them complete control of someone's digital board.
"[The attack] is basically a synthetic version of the same RF noise [at that intersection in Melbourne]," he says, and allows them to cold stop a board or send it flying in reverse, tossing the rider in either case.
They plan to present their findings Saturday at the Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas.
takyon: The researchers tested three skateboards and found vulnerabilities in each. They completed an exploit for a $1500 American-made "Boosted" board, and are working on an exploit for a $700 board called E-Go made by China-based firm Yuneec.
(Score: 2, Informative) by LowSpeedHighDrag on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:58PM
I have a Metroboard and it actually uses an IR remote. The board originally came with a bluetooth remote that was prone to occasional drop outs. (Not a huge deal, but annoying, the board just shuts off the motor and coasts to a stop when the connection is dropped.) Newer models changed to IR which I upgraded to and is very reliable. The IR requires a clear line of sight so it would be pretty difficult to physically get a hacked IR signal aimed at the board sensor for any length or time (which points straight up) while I'm riding by.
As another poster noted: A wired controller wouldn't really be very hard or much of a problem riding. I'd just have a reinforced cord tether and a plug that would safely pull out with a hard pull.