https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/porsche_bricked_russia/
Hundreds of Porsches in Russia were rendered immobile last week, raising speculation of a hack, but the German carmaker tells The Register that its vehicles are secure.
According to reports, local dealership chain Rolf traced the problem to a loss of satellite connectivity to their Vehicle Tracking Systems (VTS). This meant the systems thought a theft attempt was in progress, triggering the vehicle's engine immobilizer.
Porsche HQ was unable to help or diagnose the nature of the problem. It's understood that systems like VTS are operated by local Porsche subsidiaries or dealer networks.
But following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions, Porsche no longer exports to the country or provides after-sales service.
In a statement to The Register, a Porsche spokesperson said no other markets were affected by the issue.
"The cybersecurity of our vehicles is a central concern for Porsche," the spokesperson told us. "Protection against cybersecurity attacks is ensured by comprehensive security processes and technical measures over the entire life cycle of our vehicles. The measures include, among other things, secure software updates, protected communication channels, and regular security tests for the early detection of suspicious activity," they added.
Resourceful Russian owners have reportedly resorted to workarounds to overcome the problem, including disabling or rebooting the VTS, or removing it entirely.
Others have claimed that disconnecting their car's batteries for ten hours does the trick. These have worked in some but not all cases, apparently.
The issue sparked speculation of a cyberattack, but security and privacy experts we spoke with were dubious.
Cian Heasley, principal consultant at Acumen Cyber, said the wave of shutdowns could be well within the capabilities of a hacktivist group, but said there had been no chatter indicating this was the case.
"If this were a coordinated cyberattack, I would have expected one of the larger pro-Ukraine groups to have claimed this attack by now and posted some sort of evidence, similar to what we saw when Russian airline Aeroflot was attacked in July of this year."
Rik Ferguson, VP Security Intelligence at Forescout, said: "Modern immobilizers don't react only to what happens around the vehicle, they depend on a constant 'trust heartbeat' signal from cloud or satellite backends. From the outside, a deliberate hack and an intentional backend shutdown can look almost identical: the tracking service disappears, the car interprets that as theft, and the immobilizer kicks in."
High-end vehicles rely on a long tail of services outside the owner's control, Ferguson said, spanning the cloud, satellite operators, and regional partners.
"Sanctions, contract disputes, misconfigurations, or attackers can all break that chain, and when they do, a six-figure car is suddenly just a very expensive ornament."
Bugcrowd CSO Trey Ford added: "It sounds like the system design has a fail-safe where if there is a loss of satellite service (platform issues, military, etc.) can lead to a lockout of the vehicle to help mitigate theft – which makes sense."
Otherwise, a criminal could create a Faraday cage to block the antenna and prevent tracking.
He continued: "It also stands to reason that a platform with the ability to lock down vehicles could inadvertently do that." This could be down to an engineering issue, failed update, a database problem, "or something as trivial as a service plan accounting error impacting satellite communication services."
The issue highlights broader concerns around connected vehicles.
Chris Hauk, consumer privacy advocate at Pixel Privacy, said engine kill systems were pushed as an anti-theft device. But "the technology could also be used by hackers to cause havoc and could also be used by totalitarian governments to shut down vehicles belonging to 'enemies of the state.'"
Paul Bischoff, consumer privacy advocate at Comparitech, added: "Any feature that requires a network connection should not affect the basic functionality of the vehicle."
"Besides remote hacks, drivers also have to worry about privacy. Newer cars collect and share a lot of information about their users, often without explicit informed consent."
It's worth noting that most Russian Porsche owners were probably not stranded without wheels, as no other brands have been affected – Russia's elite are also enthusiastic fans of Bentleys, Aston Martins, and other luxury marques.
(Score: 2, Informative) by c0lo on Friday December 12 2025, @10:17AM
Закон о «суверенном интернете» [wikipedia.org] - I can almost bet their sovereign DNS fell outta sync.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DiarrhoeaChaChaCha on Friday December 12 2025, @10:42AM
Could this perhaps be due to signal jamming in Russia, possibly by the Russians themselves?
Russian, and perhaps Ukrainian, drones have been found to use e.g. Starlink dishes for navigation.
I wouldn't be surprised if the problem might be related to the Russians jamming satellite signals to mess with Ukrainian drones invading their airspace on a regular basis.
It would be great karma, if this were to be the case :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @10:45AM (23 children)
All this proves to me is that the wisest thing is to never own an internet connected car. None of my cars can be remotely disabled, either accidentally, due to a cyber-attack, or deliberately by third parties.
Why on earth would I spend money on a device that can be turned into a paperweight remotely? I suspect a lot of people just don't realise it until it happens to me, but I hope this is a lesson to them.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @10:47AM (7 children)
I guess they don't and even then.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @10:59AM (6 children)
* To "THEM", dammit
I swear my abilities to write in a non-computer language are degrading at an accelerating rate :-/
(Score: 4, Funny) by zocalo on Friday December 12 2025, @12:50PM (5 children)
YMMV on whether that will make any difference to readability for the rest of us. :)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @01:22PM (4 children)
Honestly, at the rate I'm degrading, I'll soon be able to express myself better in Perl than in English. Perhaps at that point I'll just get an AI to translate my Gibberish into human English and back again as and when required.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Friday December 12 2025, @02:44PM (3 children)
Can Perl even express what you want to express in English?
Does Perl, or any ordinary programming language, have anything beside the imperative and interrogative moods?
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @04:30PM
Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister does what it wants.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2025, @02:20AM (1 child)
For some yes:
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
write it, print the hex while each watches,
reverse its length, write again;
kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
values aside, each one;
die sheep! die to reverse the system
you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
wait, wait until time;
wait until next year, next decade;
sleep, sleep, die yourself,
die at last
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2025, @09:34AM
# Black Perl, adapted for Perl 5 by Jonadab.
# Adapted from Black Perl, as seen in the Camel,
# 2nd ed., p 553
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time;
open spell book; study; read (spell, $scan, select); tell us;
write it, print the hex while each watches,
reverse length, write again;
kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
unlink arms, shift, wait and listen (listening, wait).
sort the flock (then, warn "the goats", kill "the sheep");
kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
values aside, each one;
die sheep; die (to, reverse the => system
you accept (reject, respect));
next step,
kill next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it.
select (quickly) and warn next victim;
AFTERWARDS: tell nobody.
wait, wait until time;
wait until next year, next decade;
sleep, sleep, die yourself,
die @last
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday December 12 2025, @11:30AM (1 child)
Has it happened to you yet? If not, what's taking so long? I mean, we just can't wait to realize but you keep us away from the realization.
:large-grin:
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @12:03PM
Well as they say, you should never satiate your adoring public, always keep a smidge back, so they are eager for more :-)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by weirsbaski on Friday December 12 2025, @01:02PM (8 children)
Yeah, but do they still make new cars like that? It feels like the switchover to internet'ed cars is being forced by attrition.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @01:20PM (7 children)
Depends on where you live I guess. In the EU the answer is "no", which is why the price of second hand cars has been increasing faster than the price of new cars, to the point where prices for "pre-connected" cars are almost as high as new ones.
It also resulted in the interesting thing of "working classics" becoming a thing in Europe. Before classic cars I would see on the road were usually exotics, sports cars, or historically important, and then only on weekends on at a car show.
However now I see more and more restored "everyday" cars from the 80s and 90s around during the working day. Everything from 4x4's to saloons, estate cars and the odd pickup truck. Used instead of a new main car. My neighbour has a 1992 Volvo 850 which he uses for everything, a bit dented from life in the city, but mechanically and interior is very good, and the costs to run are peanuts compared to a new car.
I don't know about China and the USA, but I do know (ironically considering this article) that Russian new cars are not internet-connected. I need to buy a replacement car that is LHD, and before the whole Ukraine thing kicked off and sanctions came into being I did look at getting a new Russian car, as they are robust, simple/easy to maintain (no DRM/proprietary nonsense) and parts are cheap.
However that is now not an option, so I'm looking at second hand models, something 2014 or earlier ideally as a daily. I'd go for Toyota (RAV4) as I want something reliable, but they seem not to come up for sale often (probably because their owners are happy with them and the car may well outlast the owner to boot).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday December 12 2025, @01:36PM (6 children)
I'm expecting a repeat of the 1970s import car crisis, where Chinese import cars aren't as enshittified as USA/Japanese cars so they'll sweep the market.
Its hard to believe in 2025 that back in the early 70s American made cars were intentionally designed to physically fall apart in only a couple years to keep sales up and the Japanese imports absolutely whipped them just by not intentionally being designed to fall apart. I suspect that likewise the Chinese import cars will soon arrive, not be designed to be shitty like the competition is, and just wipe the crappy USA and Japanese products out of the market. It can't happen soon enough...
Its a shame because physically Japanese cars are REALLY well made and the competition made American mfgrs give up on intentionally producing crap, lots of American made cars are also excellent... physically. Now the UI, the feature sets, the software, all flaming dumpster fires from both and I can't wait for the Chinese to outdo them. Merely not intentionally screwing up cars would be a vast improvement over the existing USA/Japanese/Korean products.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @01:48PM (5 children)
Oh In Europe that is already happening. For those who don't know/care about the perils of always-connected/tracked cars filled with screens and gadgetry, the Chinese cars are better built, more reliable and cheaper than their European models.
They are eating the market quite rapidly over here. While those of us that do care about the above stick with older models, the pool of buyers for new European cars is rapidly dwindling (especially as due to the sanctions and explosive energy costs, those cars are even more expensive than before). At this point the only market interested in new European cars are the insecure and posers, who buy "the badge" as an affirmation of their perceived status, and usually bought on credit/lease.
Even then, that is mostly the German models, so I presume most of what is keeping the other Euro manufacturers afloat is spare parts and servicing for the older models at this point, plus the fact most of them are not really "European" anymore anyway but are global, so have sales elsewhere to tide them over. Even then though, the industry is collapsing in the EU as they relocate manufacturing to the rest of the world.
It would be interesting to see if the same result happens in the USA if/when loads of Chinese cars end up there, and what kind of reaction the Japs and local manufacturers would have to the new competition.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @03:01PM (1 child)
In the UK the Chinese cars are too easy to steal:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/14/chinese-carmakers-told-improve-locking-devices-uk-market [theguardian.com]
The UK has declined. In the old days they were stealing artifacts and resources from other countries. Nowadays they're stealing cars from their own streets. 😉
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday December 14 2025, @12:49PM
I guess in China they don't have to worry about the cars being stolen that much, so they didn't think to fit more robust security systems.
Truth be told it shows the UK in a bad light more than China here, but the UKs decline is a well known and often discussed thing in the UK (and as far as I can see its been discussed at least for the last 20 years, but with no movement to changing direction).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday December 12 2025, @07:42PM (2 children)
I have an old Toyota with one of the legendary 1NZ engines, the ones that laugh at going 300K miles, mine's only 60K its not even broken in really, if I could buy a Chinese car and engine transplant a non-CVT Toyota powertrain in it, minus the utterly awful modern Toyota user interface... I think that would be the ultimate commuter vehicle...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Sunday December 14 2025, @12:41PM (1 child)
Toyota's make very reliable cars (mechanically). They are also the most expensive around here to buy, but are definitely top of the league and above the Chinese in the reliability department.
That is why I want my next car to be a Toyota. Unfortunately they absolutely love their gadgets and gimmicks in the car, which I find distracting, especially when I can't remove/turn them off.
I hear you about their user interface. I tried their new models (including the Hybrids) and found them way too gimmicky and distracting inside, with the big centre console touch screen, screen dashboard with all the distracting animations, and all the blue/white lights everywhere (seriously, you can't pick a worse colour for night driving, there is a reason people stuck with "red" and "green" for decades, and it was not due to lack of alternatives).
While impressive in the showroom (e.g. the "self parking"), I tired of lot of the "cool" features after about a week of real-world use. The "self parking" worked only as long as you could position the car in such a way as the computer can take over, which usually took longer than me just parallel parking the thing myself manually, and the "assisted driving" on motorways was deadly dangerous to actually use. Plus I found the electric steering to provide no road feedback at all, it felt like I was disconnected from the road when driving, which actually made me very stressed and anxious, it was not a nice feeling at all.
However they are mechanically robust and reliable still, I just wish they were not so computerised. If I could have it my way, I'd get something like a first/second generation petrol RAV4 (1994-2005) , that to me strikes the right balance of electronic creature comforts and mechanical reliability.
Thing is those cars are now at least 20 years old, and it is hard one for sale in good condition. Most of the ones for sale have actually been run ragged, either due to lack of maintenance, heavy commercial use or are otherwise suspect. Tidy examples rarely come up for sale, presumably because the owners are happy to have a simple reliable car that causes them little headache so don't want to part with it.
The way things are going I may well have to scrap "Reliable" from my car wishlist, and get something German (like a Mercedes ML). Germany is just down the road from me, so there are plenty for sale, they are cheap, and while not reliable or well built there are ample spare parts available and almost every independent garage knows how to work on them. Not ideal, but sometimes you have to compromise *shrug*
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday December 14 2025, @07:16PM
To me it feels like driving on the worst imaginable black ice, which happens from time to time at my latitude. I agree the road feel is very unappealing. Also its all custom parts whereas mechanical steering is at least theoretically repairable after the parts aren't made.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday December 12 2025, @02:29PM (1 child)
I think the lesson a lot of the world is going to take from this is to buy Chinese, and never US/EU.
"But xioami could do this too, you should beware the ability to do this" I hear every sensible person on here saying. But I think a great amount of the world thinks in terms of reputation, not possibilities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @03:04PM
Xiaomi makes it hard to unlock your phone bootloader though: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1mgn0yj/xiaomis_bootloader_unlock_system_is_broken_heres/ [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaTech/comments/1mabb3w/people_found_new_ways_to_unlock_xiaomi_bootloader/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Friday December 12 2025, @04:00PM
There was that time that Tesla had an outage and anyone whose cellphone app was in a logged out state could not use their phone as a key.
There is a reason I always carry my Tesla key card with me: it doesn't require any Internet connectivity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday December 12 2025, @08:52PM
Its literally an anti-theft / vehicle recovery feature that they explicitly subscribed to. If you have to ask why you'd spend money on a feature to remotely find and disable your car when its not where you left it, I don't know what to tell you.
What's the lesson they learn when they come out to the parking lot and find their car missing, log into an app, and the police recover their car a few hours later?
There's two sides to this coin. I can see and appreciate your perspective on it, but the other side is perfectly reasonable too. Insurance companies give big discounts for these remote vehicle tracking and immobilization systems because they work, and lots of cars with them are quickly recovered and/or perhaps don't get stolen in the first place. Deterrent? I don't know, but the actuarial data must be convincing, because insurance companies don't give discounts without data to back it up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @12:35PM (7 children)
Curious, non-native speaker wants to know.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @12:44PM
Not normally, but it can be in today's online discourse, I suppose, much like how people say things like "I'm not very good at adulting."
Perhaps the headline editor is being "ironic." (Note to non-native speaker: I don't know what to tell you about that word, as the hip and cool use of the word has nothing to do with irony)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Unixnut on Friday December 12 2025, @12:55PM (1 child)
Well, as a native speaker I can tell you its not "proper" English, but I've also seen its a "thing" to playfully munge the English language in that way nowadays.
The structure “X forgot how to NOUN” seems to have developed from the "to Adult" meme amongst millennials, which brought the word "Adulting" into existence, which was then expanded into a more generic "to NOUN" structure used on social media for all kinds of things.
I can't complain, wordplay [catb.org] has been a long tradition in hacker culture, and its own slang expands and develops with time, expansion of the internet and new generations arriving.
Indeed its hard to define "proper" English, best you can do is define "formal" vs "informal/slang". English as a whole is an amalgamation of other languages, which always reminds me of this quote:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2025, @03:07PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by HiThere on Friday December 12 2025, @02:09PM (1 child)
"You can verb any noun in the language." I think that was George Bernard Shaw.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday December 12 2025, @02:54PM
I heard that first as "In English, any noun can be verbed" attributed to Peter Naur.
It's interested to see it attributed to George Bernard Shaw.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday December 12 2025, @03:39PM
It may depend on which adult -- or person currently adulting [stackexchange.com] -- you ask.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday December 12 2025, @04:03PM
It's The Register. They love to play with words in this fashion.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rich on Friday December 12 2025, @02:57PM
Meanwhile, the prices for the last air (really oil) cooled 3.2l 911s have more than doubled in price since 2005. Go figure what's considered really valuable. That said, I'd wager the plain spec (shifter) 986/987/981 Flat-6 Boxsters are going to see a similar development, if they haven't already. Their prices seem to be on a stable plateau.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday December 12 2025, @03:41PM (1 child)
The fact that it can happen is enough to ensure I'll never buy a Porsche.
Being the dumbest idiot in the land and president of the US should be 2 different people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Friday December 12 2025, @08:42PM
Lets apply some critical thinking here.
All the articles say 'hundreds of Porsches'... are there really so few in Russia?
The Porsche VTS has been available since 2013. Porsche stopped shipping to Russia in 2022. There were over 6000 Porsche deliveries to Russia in 2020 alone. Why weren't THOUSANDS or even TENS of THOUSANDS of vehicles affected?
Answer: because its a completely optional feature, that doesn't need to be installed or active, and costs extra to subscribe to.
You may disagree with VTS on principal and that's totally reasonable. So don't use it if you don't want it. Or at least turn it off if your country goes to (proxy-) war with NATO/Germany. But its hardly a rational reason to swear off ever buying a Porsche.
Also, these Vehicle Tracking and Immobilizing Systems (VTS) are available for all premium brands, and are available as 3rd party add-ons for absolutely any car, so if the mere possibility it can be installed is a deal breaker for you, enjoy riding your bike i guess.
On the flip side, these tracking systems have dramatically increased stolen vehicle recovery rates on vehicles that have them; and the insurance discounts for having them can be very substantial so the actuarial data behind must be solid. Insurance companies know what saves them money.
So the question becomes: Are you more likely to be stranded one day because someone stole your car, or because the antitheft system failed and which would you prefer?
FWIW a car is stolen every 30-40 seconds in the USA. (roughly a million thefts per year from a pool of roughly 300 million cars in the USA).
That's around 1 in 300 cars is stolen every year. (Really?? is my math off? I wasn't expecting it to be that high.)
Obviously the car itself, where its stored and used and parked, etc all dramatically affect the odds, but still its an interesting data point.
It sounds like 2024 saw thefts drop to about 850,000 cars, from around 1 million in 2022 and 2023 each.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by clive_p on Friday December 12 2025, @06:38PM (2 children)
The explanation, about lack of signals, makes no sense. Otherwise it would happen if you entered a long tunnel or indeed stored your car in an underground garage with no signals from the surface.
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Friday December 12 2025, @07:34PM
Depends on how long it has to go without a signal. The idea that its going to kill the car the instant you break line of sight to a satellite is of course absurd.
Perhaps this complete 'failure mode' happens after months or even a year.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 25 2025, @08:50PM
The car may well be able to detect traffic signals when they are turned off. Can't you?
They still look like traffic signals. And the car may have stored a map of local territory identifying the intersections where there are traffic signals.
I can recognise traffic signals by sight alone. I suspect that a dedicated AI could pass a traffic-light-based CAPTCHA as well as I can.