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A pair of vehicles are operating on a route through the city as part of the Baltic state's presidency of the European Union, and have so far managed not to collide with any other road users, national broadcaster ERR reports [gallery itself requires JS from s.err.ee and news.err.ee -- Ed.].
But there have been a number of near misses since the launch on Saturday, ERR says. An eyewitness reports that one of the buses failed to give way to a police car with its lights flashing on Monday; while an ERR photographer saw a bus ignore a red light at a pedestrian crossing, ploughing on regardless of the "surprise" it had provoked.
Despite no-one driving, local traffic law means that there still has to be a responsible person on board, meaning that all passengers are greeted by a host. They've been tasked with explaining the technology to passengers new to the world of autonomous vehicles, ERR says.
Judging from the picture, the buses soothingly seem to be constructed out of Nerf.
Your humble editor lives and works only hundreds of meters from each end of the trial route, so decided to take a quick, and fortunately uneventful, trip on one this (thursday) lunchtime. I now realise there are some things I forgot to snap, such as what the member of staff (a) does, and (b) can do. The answers to which are simple: (a) very little apart from gesticulate to pedestrians who are too frightened to cross in front of the vehicle; and (b) very little at all, as there are no controls. There's a keyboard from which a reset can probably be invoked, but that's it. [Not so - I saw more on my second trip, see below -- Ed.]
I'm happy to treat this as an AMAA (Ask Me Almost Anything), in particular if that means I can waste time on the bus again tomorrow!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 04 2017, @09:06AM (10 children)
May require another trip, but: Does it have wireless? USB? Ethernet ports? Can you run nmap/wireshark/etc? What happens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @09:15AM (5 children)
ummm... are you serious?
let's ignore the legal problems: what we are left with is a reasonably heavy moving object that's already passed a red light.
If you hack into it (and I assume it is not that hard), how do you know you won't break it, leading to serious accidents?
I mean literally you go in, you type "ls", someone generated a thousand different files in the same folder because reasons, you make the partition hang, and the self-driving code hangs as well because bug.
I don't like the conclusion of that chain of events, but it doesn't seem that unlikely.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 04 2017, @11:07AM (2 children)
If you outlaw hacking, only outlaws will hack driverless vehicles and kill innocent pedestrians.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @11:36AM (1 child)
I've no idea whether there are any laws in Estonia about hacking. I personally view unauthorized access to anything connected to a network as equivalent to entering someone's home/office without permission, which is wrong even when the door is unlocked.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 04 2017, @11:49AM
Yes, there are laws. That place was a training ground for Putin's criminal hackers:
2007 cyberattacks on Estonia [wikipedia.org]
10 Years After the Landmark Attack on Estonia, Is the World Better Prepared for Cyber Threats? [foreignpolicy.com]
And some more context (this was in 2007):
Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe [wired.com]
Don't embrace online voting! ... Don't embrace hackable vehicles?
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 04 2017, @11:20AM
The real final commercial busses I would expect to be physically locked down more. (For example, as the driver only needs the manual override switch, the joystick, and the wireless (mini) keyboard, there's no reason for any of the other ports to be exposed, they can be behind a locked cover.)
The driver also told us that there's a similar system at Helsinki-Vantaa airport. No idea what job it's doing there, I don't fly from Helsinki often.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday August 04 2017, @02:59PM
It's very, very serious to know whether such a system can be hacked. The simple reason is that it is
And if it can be hacked, there is a danger of someone hacking it, which could
You ask "ummm... are you serious" as if you didn't know these things...
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday August 04 2017, @09:29AM (3 children)
You have to remember that the staff are in the vehicle the whole time, and it's a tiny little cubicle, there's no way that you'd be able to get away with doing anything suspicious in his space. The only way you'll get physical access to the device is if you're willing to add "assault" to your charge list.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday August 04 2017, @10:51AM (2 children)
The control panel has the following:
A manual/auto switch. This seems useful to get past gawkers.
A stone-age joystick (2 sticks, one for forward/back, one for steering.
An alarm button.
A USB port, not connected to the keyboard as I first thought, it's just an extension cable.
The keyboard is wireless.
An RJ45 port labelled nothing more than "RJ45".
A serial port, presumably RS232, labelled "Diag".
While we were stuck in our cab, the staff from the other bus came to assist, at that point, a USB gizmo (something pretending to be a kbd and/or mouse) could be plugged into the extension lead easily.
No idea how secure the underlying linux is, whether you could actually perform code or config changes.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Friday August 04 2017, @01:02PM
There was a story about hacking wireless keyboards a while back... one can imagine sitting on the bus with their laptop out typing into a terminal... wasn't that in the movie Speed? Hollywood likes doing remakes nowadays.
Nb: I didn't suggest hacking it. Just that, well ya know might try. It would be interesting to know if they thought of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @05:22PM
Waaait a minute...
(Jokes aside, thanks for the AMAA :) )