Malware attack is preventing car inspections in eight US states:
A malware cyberattack on emissions testing company Applus Technologies is preventing vehicle inspections in eight states, including Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Utah, and Wisconsin.
On Tuesday, March 30th, vehicle emissions testing platform Applus Technologies suffered a "malware" attack that caused them to disconnect their IT systems.
"Unfortunately, incidents such as this are fairly common and no one is immune," said Darrin Greene, CEO of the US entity, Applus Technologies, Inc. "We apologize for any inconvenience this incident may cause. We know our customers and many vehicle owners rely on our technology and we are committed to restoring normal operations as quickly as possible."
[...] "Unfortunately, we cannot provide a timetable. We do know it will not be a matter of hours or days. We will routinely update the return to service status as additional information becomes available. It is important to note that we want to make sure we have resolved all issues before restarting the system in order to avoid any additional delays or inconvenience once the program is back up and running."
Status updates are available at https://www.applustech.com/.
So, they identified 7 of the 8 affected states... would it have been that much harder to list them all? What was the 8th state?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @04:38AM (10 children)
Back in the days, you buy a car, you OWNED it.
Today, you buy car and it's like buying a smartphone controlled by the carrier/Apple/Google.
No wonder the young'uns don't buy no cars.
Maybe the millenials aren't that dumb, after all.*
* Nah, they are dumb as rock.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Monday April 05 2021, @04:57AM (8 children)
The problem here is not Millennials and/or cars.
The people who are dumb as rocks are the people who think Windows is suitable for business purposes.
Windows is for personal computers - which means "machines used in your mum's basement for gaming".
Serious computing needs a Unix(like) OS.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Monday April 05 2021, @05:31AM (1 child)
It *is* suitable for business, where people don't really have to get anything done. Just not for military applications [wired.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday April 05 2021, @07:29AM
https://mspoweruser.com/uks-nuclear-submarines-runs-windows-xp-submarines/ [mspoweruser.com] Dec 25, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @06:10AM (1 child)
While I'm a champion for Unix, mainframe OSs would like a word with you.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 05 2021, @02:21PM
As someone who has programmed in both an IBM mainframe environment and a Unix environment, I prefer Linux for getting things done. Some hardware doesn't support it (or vice-versa) and then you need to use something else...but it's never my preferred choice.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday April 05 2021, @05:07PM (3 children)
Linux as a desktop is still a shit show. Buggy window managers and dependency hell are the problems I continually ran into. Then stuff like trying to use AMD GPU drivers because the open source drivers randomly saw my hdmi tv as a sound output. OpenSUSE had some convulted scheme of adding the binary driver to a local repo but the driver broke some dependencies and X no longer worked. The dolphin browser in KDE was full of bugs. If you cut and pasted files it would complain about how it could no longer read from the source files and then show them as ghost icons until it was restarted. Thought I might try out a widget to read the cpu temp and network load. Well the cpu temp widget never loaded until you went to edit the settings and then it worked. The network widget would crash the whole toolbar.
In the end I installed a pirated copy of Windows 10 LTSC and it works great. No cortana and app store and no Microsoft account required. Oh and nothing has crashed yet either. Linux works about as well as Windows 95 did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @08:52PM
fyi, here's a discussion of Win10 LTSC from a couple of years ago,
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/ltsc-what-is-it-and-when-should-it-be-used/ba-p/293181 [microsoft.com]
Entertaining!
After watching my SO deal with her Win 10 laptop constantly "updating" and breaking things that affect her business, I've just kept Win 7 going (need Win to work with customers that are MS shops). I can see now that with 10-LTSC there may be a way forward for me when Win 7 finally outlives it's usefulness.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 06 2021, @02:08PM (1 child)
Um, your HDMI TV is a sound output.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday April 06 2021, @08:27PM
Only occasionally. Sometimes it would be labeled as disconnected. Video would display but no sound.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday April 05 2021, @05:14PM
You're just old and given up on learning new things. Plenty of people are out there hacking Teslas and Nissan Leafs to see how they work and get totaled cars back on the road. People on YouTube are buying wrecked exotics like Ferraris and showing how the average home mechanic can fix one. I know that plastic engine covers are scary to the elderly but come on. It's still a mechanical device meant to be serviced by humans. So some vehicles need a scanner from the manufacturer for specific codes but the vast majority of problems can be diagnosed with a $10 Harbor Freight scanner.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday April 05 2021, @05:29AM (1 child)
Just make car inspection illegal, then preventing car inspection will be a civic duty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by MostCynical on Monday April 05 2021, @05:50AM
Not enough: ban cars; nothing to inspect!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @05:43AM (23 children)
this company took over emissions testing in chicago a few years back, in a bid to save $11mil. after they got the contract, they closed all the facilities in the city and just run them in the suburbs now. where rent is cheaper, so they pass the savings to the city. this of course means an extra 20 miles to drive, for every car in the city, every 4 years.
when the residents got pissed off at this underbidding scam, where they provided the cost w/o telling anyone they're going to do it by moving testing to the burbs, the company had this to say: the EPA did it, don't blame us. What they meant by that, is that EPA guidelines say the maximum distance to get to a testing facility has to be 12 miles. So they put the facilities 10 miles away. of course, that's 10 miles direct. Since we don't have flying cars, it's 15miles of driving.
so, that's about 300k cars registered in chicago, driving an extra 20 miles, every 4 years. with our traffic, about an hour extra out of each person's life - in addition to the extra road damage from driving, extra accidents, and extra gas expenditures and pollution. You'd figure, you got a heavily concentrated place with high car density, let's put a testing facility smack in the middle. We had some. Applusfag came along and said - fuck literally all of you, we're going to make you all drive to the suburbs to make some extra cash, after lying to get the contract.
Malware Attacks are not preventing car inspections. The Corrupt Faggots that is Applus are preventing car inspections - because that is literally the whole business strategy of the company. In fact, since they are proven liars, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a staffing or other issue, and they brought down their own systems to cover it up and not get the blame. The people who run that company need to be in prison taking it up the ass from Bubba and friends.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @06:00AM (7 children)
Chicago and Illinois are bankrupt. Get out before the 30% property tax hikes and retroactive income taxes to trap you there begin.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @06:18AM (6 children)
Hate to correct someone agreeing w/ me on the anger, but literally every single thing you said is false. And it's likely you're a trumptard who believes in conspiracies fed to you by megachurch politicians.
1. Illinois has some of the lowest income taxes in the country. There are almost no states with lower income tax on a median income, and the couple of states with zero income tax have higher excise tax on those salaries. Yes, that's paid by the company, who simply pays you less salary. Salary/tax wise, Illinois is an optimal place to be. Retroactive? Did you suck that information out of Q's asshole?
2. There is no 30% property tax hike. Property taxes work different in every city. The way it works in Chicago, is you get an automatic hike every few years and if you don't agree you submit for an evaluation, which you Always win and get no hike at all. While property taxes are not low, they have been the same in the last decade.
3. Neither the city nor Illinois are bankrupt. They have very good pension plans for city workers - some of the best in the country. This is a good thing - blue collar workers in civil service don't end up poor. They were counting on more stimulus money, which the GOP put a stop to - leaving their mostly republican blue collar supporters completely fucked. So now the democrats are considering raising taxes, for people making 250k and over individually, so those dumb republican voters who elected the idiots who screwed them over, have food on the table.
You are literally dumber than a doorknob, and the misinformation you spread is only believed by other morons like yourself. So the question is - why are you making up this pile of bullshit, when the only people dumb enough to believe it are already on your side? Retard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @06:35AM (5 children)
Good luck:
> Because the debt is so large, it’s unrealistic to think that new taxes (such as a tax on legalized marijuana or financial transactions) or increases that affect only a narrow segment of the population will be enough.[...]In our view, Illinois’s best option is to impose a statewide residential property tax that expires when its unfunded pension liability is paid off. In our baseline scenario, we estimate that the tax rate required to pay off the pension debt over 30 years would be about 1%. This means that homeowners with homes worth $250,000 would pay an additional $2,500 per year in property taxes, those with homes worth $500,000 would pay an additional $5,000, and those with homes worth $1 million would pay an additional $10,000.
[...]
Standard economic theory predicts that home values go down in response to new property taxes (that is, they are “capitalized” into home values). Current homeowners would not be happy about this, but it would be a good result for the Illinois economy. That’s because the new taxes wouldn’t affect people thinking of moving to Illinois. While they would have to pay higher property taxes, that would be offset by not having to pay as much for their new homes. In addition, current homeowners would not be able to avoid the new tax by selling their homes and moving because home prices should reflect the new tax burden quickly. (We included this “tax penalty” effect in our calculations below.)
http://midwest.chicagofedblogs.org/?p=3096 [chicagofedblogs.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @06:39AM
https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/blogs/midwest-economy/2018/how_should_the_state_of_illinois [chicagofed.org]
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @07:41PM (3 children)
So your proof is an opinion piece by a guy pushing for reform, from 2018? Guess what sherlock, it's been 3 years since 2018. The pension issue has been around for decades. No property tax increases.
>In our view, Illinois’s best option is to impose a statewide residential property tax
cool. in my view and the view of everyone in charge we're paying pensions fine using other means. My property taxes have been the same in over a decade.
There was a % increase. Guess what that was for sherlock? House values went down, the cost to take out garbage and maintain roads did not. So the percent increased, while the amount stayed the same.
But cool, like expected, you found a random dude's opinion somewhere on a blog on the internet, and that's your proof that it's happening. stop the steal! masks cause 5G! vaccines implant you with tracking chips! the earth is flat! antifa!!! ...amirite?4
again, you are a retard. a person with a brain incapable of basic logic. you are an animal of species below me on the evolutionary scale. nothing you do or say matters - you are nothing - an ant to step on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @11:43PM (2 children)
So Q is the chicago Fed according to you? Or will you admit to being ignorant about the plans being floated to deal with your bankrupt city and state?
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday April 06 2021, @03:25AM (1 child)
No, the guy writing the opinion blog on the chicago fed website is not Q. Nor is he the Chicago Fed, nor does he dictate policy. Q is a random moron who people with your exact broken brain chemistry believe, simply because he says stuff you want to believe. Reality and policy doesn't care about Q, what you believe, or what some people have been writing on blogs. That's pretty obvious to everyone, you excluded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @04:17AM
So you agree not-Q said what you accused me of citing Q said.. That is progress. Anyway, enjoy!
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 05 2021, @01:07PM (9 children)
Twenty miles every four years!? Oh the humanity! #FreeFakefuck
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 05 2021, @03:35PM (6 children)
Living in a suburb with constant traffic caused by a neverending stream of cars to be inspected? #GraftTMBAnImagination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday April 06 2021, @03:32AM
to put some numbers on it, it's about 200 cars extra per day that will be going to the Skokie location. A village with about 100k people, mostly retirees in tiny cheap homes. small streets. those 200 cars will all be following the same highway, likely on the way to or from work, or at lunch. they'll all get off at the same exit, and follow the same street, which has 2 lanes each way - one of those lanes used by parked cars, in front of those single family homes.
you see, buzztard can't do basic math, so he just hears "once every 4 years." Because he can't count in double digits, 300,000+ cars to him just looks like a "3"
let's also keep in mind he's arguing that putting something people need, in the middle of that group of people, makes no sense - we should put it an hour drive away. not surprising, he argued till he was blue that a straw would work in a vacuum and every physics book and scientist is wrong and are idiots, which he apparently figured out at 16.
this is your king without pants, soylent, and he forgot to wipe his ass.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 06 2021, @02:11PM (4 children)
Bitch, please. The amount of traffic caused by every last car needing to be inspected would be noticeable only if you required it to happen in a single month every four years.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 06 2021, @02:55PM (3 children)
Bad breath. You overdosing on carrion, I see.
Ok, convince me. Start with your assumptions and do a back of napkin computation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 06 2021, @03:43PM (2 children)
Sure. One point five trips to the DMV per vehicle per decade. Assume fifteen miles each way. Given my car's extremely low mileage relative to the rest of the driving population of 3K/year, that's an addition of 0.15% miles driven per decade. Given the average American driver's (including those who have a license but are usually in the passenger seat) mileage of 12.5K/year, it's a 0.036% increase per decade.
So, please, do fuck off with your hysteria.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 06 2021, @05:13PM (1 child)
I suppose that's the good thing that your degrading mental abilities doesn't let you note how bad they degrade.
I'm asking how many more extra cars will the supposedly quiet roads of the suburbia will see, TMB says "it's gonna increase my mileage by 0.036%".
Take a rest, TMB, I'm no longer interested in this subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 06 2021, @08:02PM
None more. They already have to see them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Monday April 05 2021, @07:34PM
Correct. An extra 20 miles, and extra hour of time, once every four years. For half a million people. Glad you finally understand something.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @05:03AM
Fuck off
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 05 2021, @01:29PM (4 children)
The whole idea of an annual car inspection is also a fraud, mostly another excuse to extract revenue from the public in the name of safety. What little it does do to detect problems and improve safety and reduce emissions is not worth the cost. Mostly, they check the lights, seat belts, wiper blades, and that sort of easy, obvious stuff. And they're anal about it. If that check engine light is on, doesn't matter why (some cars have been programmed to turn it on every 30,000 miles and never mind whether there is an actual problem, the goal is to force the car owner to take their car to the dealership), forget about passing inspection. High beam indicator not working? Fail. Totally misses a whole host of real problems, as it is not a serious inspection of the sort you'd get from a good mechanic checking out a used car for you.
To add to the insult, some of the procedures they have used in the past are damaging to the car. Such as, to test whether the emergency brake is working on a manual shift car, they set the brake, start the car, and pop the clutch. If the engine stalls, then the car passes. If the car moves, because the engine is stronger than the emergency brake, then it fails. Why the heck they couldn't just park the car on a slope and check whether the brake holds I really don't know. They quit doing that one years ago, after irate owners complained of the damage that test could and did cause.
Virginia had a couple of extra twists, in also requiring that the windshield be pretty much pristine, almost no cracks allowed. A crack longer than a quarter inch is enough to disqualify. The excuse is that it is safer. Also, does your car have side marker lights? Then in Virginia, they have to work. Never mind that those lights are not required, and many cars don't have such lights. As might be expected, California has very high emissions standards. Good enough in other states is not good enough for California. Prepare to have to buy a new catalytic converter if you take your old car into California.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 05 2021, @02:28PM
Perhaps that's a state specific problem, but I never had that problem in California. I did need to replace the catalytic converter once, and I think I had to get timing checked a couple of times. (Well, I don't drive, so that was my wife's actions which is why I'm a bit vague about it. I did need to pay for it though, so I remember that I thought it was reasonable.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 05 2021, @03:20PM (1 child)
They used to do all that stuff in my home state, and a couple years ago the governor kicked them out and now rando car mechanics do a cursory ODB-II scan that takes about two minutes.
It seems to be the way of the future.
It doesn't seem to have had any effect on safety etc.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 06 2021, @12:49PM
ODB II is great. Want to watch though, that it isn't abused and programmed to lie. You know, like that whole dieselgate scandal with VW.
I had a '94 Lumina until 3 years ago when it succumbed to a major engineering flaw. Seems over the years the engine block or heads are prone to warping. When it gets to the point that the seal between them can no longer hold, it starts leaking antifreeze. To repair it, have to get another engine. It had been running great until that happened. That was the final blow, and I got rid of the car. It had those stupid door mounted seat belts, no air bags, and no ODB II, as that wasn't in all cars until 1996.
Without ODB II, inspecting it was a major pain. The last few years, I had to take it to another city to find an inspection station that still had the means to do it without ODB II. At 25 years of age, it would have been excused that, but no, it was 24 years old when the engine developed that problem. The state put a big pinch on the few years immediately before '96. Cars older than '94, no problem they're 25 years old, no emissions inspection required, and cars newer than '95, not a big hassle, they have ODB II. For the few cars in the '94 and '95 model years that were still on the road, you're shafted, thanks to inspection stations phasing out the means to test those cars as demand trended to zero.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05 2021, @07:34PM
yes, several states have already done studies which showed that inspections have no effect on safety overall. these are just petty theft. same as having to re-register your car every year like a groveling slave. they could just take the road taxes out of a adder to the fuel tax so that people who drove more paid more road tax instead of charging people who work from home the same as a road warrior. they could handle all this bullshit with software, but they prefer to give these desk "jobs" as kickbacks for votes. mandatory auto insurance is just an extortion racket. all accidents whether due to mechanical issues or driver stupidity could be handled by voluntary insurance and courts but that would require people to do their fucking jobs and not be parasitic thieves. the people need to make it more expensive for these abuses to continue and the cowards in government will relent quickly. Of course the people will have to be less cowardly than the government. who will win? the tv watchers or the scum?