Hacking the Car

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Can someone take your car over while you drive?

 

The answer could well be "yes", especially if you consider the corporate inertia in most automakers.

[Duke87 1,070]

The vulnerability of computerized devices that people don't traditionally think about as computers is a subject of much discussion in cybersecurity circles. Someone recently was discussing how to hack into traffic signals, which they also found had no security features or encryption other than locking the cabinets the controllers sit in.

 

In a way Chrysler has a point, though: there are no known instances of someone having remotely hacked into a car. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's likely. If you hack into a car you can make it crash or break down by just throwing everything wild, but you can't intelligently control it without being able to see the road ahead, which a person located remotely wouldn't be able to do.

 

This limits such hacks to being something dorks in their parents' basement might do because they think it's funny, you won't see professional crime rings going for it because it isn't something that can easily be made profitable.

 

Also worth noting that as things stand, most cars have little to no external network link by which a hacker could remotely get in. That is changing, though, so with that key pathway provided this is something that will be of greater concern in the future.

 

 

Like with all these things, though, the companies making the devices are unlikely to be proactive about providing security since they are profit-driven and aren't going to spend money on such things unless regulation requires it or consumers demand it. Most likely, cars will continue to be relatively easy to hack until it actually starts happening and the incidents start getting press. Then there will be an ensuing panic and then automakers will beef up the cybersecurity of their cars.

[raynev1 1,886]

  I read a story like this a while ago , cars can park themselves and even put on the brakes before the driver .That may curve aggressive driving and tailgating . I believe it was MIT that pulled over a Toyota Prius and a Ford Escape . Cars use bluetooth which is remote access or hands free communications between car and driver. One instance would be , radio will turn itself down when car comes to a stop . Power windows , power brakes , power door locks and cruise control , wow , what happens when these options go haywire . I know for a fact that ABS Brakes suck . The sensors tell the CPU if one wheel stops while the rest are still moving , and then removes pressure from that wheel . Sounds good  , right . Not , many people out there are poor and can't afford to get these expensive options repaired . So then what happens ? They continue to still drive with a defective option , because they still have bills to pay . Automobiles are designed to fail these days . So the manufacture can make more money . The more options , the higher the risk . I had an '84 Chevy Chevette that I had gotten used for around $100 in 1997 . It was not garage kept . It had high miles , like 180000+/- . But check this out , it had no rust , and no power options . 4 speed manual transmission and didn't even burn oil , got around 28 miles to the gallon . After ten years of my aggressive driving , it still ran great , imagine that . the most expensive part was $100, a used taillight . I would still be driving it today , if it wasn't for that darn deer that jumped out in front of me . My point is Chevy didn't make enough money off of it . So it was discontinued , not because it had problems . Because it would not die . When I got rid of it .it had over 300000 miles and still ran great , It just didn't look nice with the caved in grill . That's why the US was pushing the "cash for clunkers" Now you have to worry about what power option is going to fail next or now getting hacked . Next thing will be CPU will snitch on you for speeding , by when you start your car and when you park and turn it off , then calculate miles and time . Mark my words. Drive safe and be very,very careful . cause you never know . Peace .

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ An interesting extrapolation.  Not only Big Brother, but your car is watching you?  Worse still would be if it called in and told on you.

 

We are approaching the era of driverless people movers, and it can't come soon enough for me.  Effectively, the car knows where to go after you give it your destination and will get you there safely.  No fuss, no muss, and no driver stress.  "Home, James, and don't spare the horses."

[hym 358]

None of this is new.  We've been discussing the dangers of integrating consumer computer technology into cars for over a decade now.  One of the key points that keeps coming up is the safety aspect, such as loss of braking control.  There is a very simple fix for this.  Keep the core control features, such as the brakes, physically separate from the rest of the consumer electronics in the vehicle.  The automakers know this and have been implementing it for years now.  Once again, the media is drumming up ratings by raising the alarm about things that really aren't all that alarming.

 

Something that is a significant concern that is playing out pretty much under everyone's radar is the issue of personal privacy and the amount of identifying data that the vehicle's recording systems capture.  A lot of vehicle's carry their own black box recording systems, and these systems can capture an incredible amount of information that can be used to reveal personal information like residence, work location, where children attend school, favorite shopping locations, etc.  One has to have physical access to the car to get the data out, but that's easy enough for a nefarious auto mechanic or the police.  The real concern, however, is when we start selling cars that talk to one another.  Then other vehicles will need access to parts of this information and we will need a means for segregating the data that can be shared with the data that should be kept private.  (Towards that end, the IEEE started a massive email campaign to find individuals with the necessary interest and technical background to develop a new set of standards for how automotive sensor data is managed.)

 

I know for a fact that ABS Brakes suck .

 

That is debatable.  They can be expensive systems to repair, but they have very well known benefits that can save lives (especially if the driver is not very skilled).  As an individual who has been driving when the traction control system has activated, it is amazing how little it can take for a vehicle to lose traction even under seemingly good conditions.  As one who has been riding in the vehicle when the traction control system has had to activate 3 times in a single left turn to keep the vehicle under control, they can sometimes be the only thing that operates fast enough to keep a driver in control of his vehicle under adverse driving conditions, even when the driver is following proper procedures for how to drive under those conditions.

 

The Dodge Viper is another example of why vehicles are equipped with ABS and traction control.  Historically, the Viper has not offered these features out of a sense of automotive purism.  Basically, the attitude was that if you actually needed these features, you were a sub-par driver that shouldn't be driving the car in the first place.  The Viper was consistently reviewed as one of the most difficult vehicles to drive, and even professional drivers found the vehicle to be terrifying to drive because it took so little for the vehicle to lose control.  Driving the Viper on snow was said to be the ultimate test of a car reviewers ability to maintain composure behind the wheel.  Chrysler ultimately elected to put ABS and traction control on the Viper simply to make it possible for more individuals to drive the car.

 

Automobiles are designed to fail these days .

 

Vehicles are designed to offer a reliable service life of 10 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.  Manufacturers attempt to keep the vehicle as cheap as possible while still meeting these target points.  Manufacturing defect scandals aside, the automakers are actually a lot better at this than they are given credit for.  How a vehicle is driven and maintained will help dictate how long it lasts, and many individuals abuse their vehicles.  My father drove a Honda Accord for 149,000 miles when, during an oil change, it became apparent that the vehicle was going to need some major repair work.  (Which he had suspected.)  Everything in the vehicle was factory parts, except the fluids.  He traded it in and got a 1/3 of the vehicle's initial value back.  The only thing he did was maintain it well and drive it carefully.

[raynev1 1,886]

I'm sorry , but all the technology IMO has caused an incredible increase in auto prices . Yes , I agree many lives have been saved with these devices , But it's all about the money . If you cant drive without the electronics in it , then maybe you shouldn't be behind the wheel in the first place . And how many people need so much power in a vehicle , that they need assistance of electronics to stay on the road ? Also what I meant about cars are designed to fail , is that they just don't last as long . Most cars today , the body rots before the motor wears out . regardless of maintenance . Sure you can put some wax on it , but the bottom will still rot off of it . Cars initially were not intended for poor people . Today a car is a person's financial status symbol . Maybe we need better education , or a little more good old common sense . The faster you drive , the further it takes to stop , duh .  The highest speed limit , where I live is 70 MPH . I might not have a lot of money in my pocket , but I do have common sense and prefer to decide for myself when the brakes need to be applied . The more parts , the more likely something can break . I really don't want to rely on a piece of electronics to protect me . that's when common sense should kick in.

[hym 358]

I'm sorry , but all the technology IMO has caused an incredible increase in auto prices . 

 

Yes and no.  It is indisputable that added electronics will increase the price of the vehicle.  At the same time, however, the marketing guys have been responsible for an explosion in the options that can go on a vehicle and the ways the vehicle can potentially be built.  That all costs money to maintain, and raises the cost of the vehicle.  Several years ago, as a cost cutting measure, GM explored reducing the number of available options on Chevy vehicles.  GM discovered that the average Chevy car had over 500,000 ways it could theoretically be built.  Chrysler discovered a similar phenomenon during an audit of its Jeep line.  As part of the next model of Jettas, VW has been working to cut down the number of possible combinations down to about 16,000 or so variations.  VW expects this to allow the company to cut several hundred dollars off the cost of a base model Jetta.

 

Basically, somewhere in the past few decades, the marketing folks convinced management to throw out traditional principles of mass production in favor of trying to please everyone.  We are now realizing this was a mistake and returning to traditional principles of more standardization between products.

 

If you cant drive without the electronics in it , then maybe you shouldn't be behind the wheel in the first place .

 

That kind of purist thinking is what produced the Viper, and helped make it a vehicle that less than 1% of Americans could drive without crashing.  When professional drivers who are used to testing Corvettes, Ferraris, Porches, and other high performance vehicles are terrified of driving the Viper, that says something about the importance of traction control systems.

 

Practically, the vast percentage of individuals do not drive high performance vehicles where vehicle control systems are absolutely mandatory to make the vehicle drivable.  However, the vast percentage of drivers are mediocre drivers at best, and statistics indicate that they will almost certainly be faced with challenging driving conditions where they will not make the right choices and the availability of vehicle control systems may well make the difference between life and death.

 

Even responsible drivers will often find themselves in situations where they benefit from electronics to control their vehicle.  I've taken my car to the dealership for maintenance and, because of construction, been forced to accelerate in a turn, all on loose gravel.  Even trying to compensate for the traction problems that this would cause, I still had the back right tire spin on me.  This sort of thing happens frequently to people and it can be helpful to have the traction control system.

 

Also what I meant about cars are designed to fail , is that they just don't last as long .

 

The average vehicle doesn't rust out in the first 7 years of ownership, which is the typical lifespan for the average vehicle.  The auto maker doesn't have much of an incentive to design past this because the vehicle likely won't be in service longer than that.  What is the value in providing something more durable than the service it will see?  You are just needlessly raising the cost of your product and pricing out your customers.

[raynev1 1,886]

 Topic is cars being hacked . No CPU = No Hack . More parts = more money .

[Duke87 1,070]

I will give you this: adding computers to a car does make it more difficult to keep maintained when it gets old since the proprietary nature of the system means that there will be more modes of failure that you cannot jerry rig your own fix for. Not to mention that mechanics and car people are all of course mechanically inclined but not all of them are computer people... the latter group will be shut out of tinkering with newer cars since going forward you will have to be adept in both disciplines to maintain an old car yourself.

 

But from a practical consumer standpoint (not from a car enthusiast standpoint), there are solid benefits to having the computer there since it enables the car to do things (like have a CVT, or advanced traction) which aren't possible otherwise. And not only that, but the reality is that the much-talked about "millennial generation" is interested in different things when it comes to buying a car than previous generations were. Your average 20-something these days doesn't care how many horses are under the hood or how fast it can go from zero to 60. The stuff that makes a car worth showing off to your friends now for the average person isn't performance, it's electronic bells and whistles. People want cars that can sync with their iPods, take phone calls via bluetooth, pull up Pandora, have a built in GPS that gives them directions, etc. In the 21st century people are starting to look at cars as electronic gadgets, and automakers must embrace this or they will not be able to continue selling them.

 

Now, some of that stuff does seem silly to me, but then I know my opinions and desires are decidedly non-mainstream.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, cars of today are still more reliable than cars from the 60s and 70s. Note how you fairly commonly see cars in use well past 100k miles, even past 200k. Used to be that 100k was the cars logical life expectancy and that was pretty much it.

 

As for the idea of a Chevette... c'mon. Some foreign cars from the 80s are exceptionally reliable and many are still on the road (particularly Volvos), but American cars from the 80s were awful.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Non-standardized black boxes and proprietary software are a challenge to hackers however amateur.  Now that the press has made this a public knowledge issue, I expect more than a few attempts by the local high-school "gurus" to crack various automotive systems.

[Compdude787 916]

Vehicles are designed to offer a reliable service life of 10 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.  Manufacturers attempt to keep the vehicle as cheap as possible while still meeting these target points.  Manufacturing defect scandals aside, the automakers are actually a lot better at this than they are given credit for.  How a vehicle is driven and maintained will help dictate how long it lasts, and many individuals abuse their vehicles.  My father drove a Honda Accord for 149,000 miles when, during an oil change, it became apparent that the vehicle was going to need some major repair work.  (Which he had suspected.)  Everything in the vehicle was factory parts, except the fluids.  He traded it in and got a 1/3 of the vehicle's initial value back.  The only thing he did was maintain it well and drive it carefully.

Ten years? 150,000 miles? That's it? Most cars--good cars, mind you--can go for about 200,000 miles before they're done. Really good cars get to 200K and just keep chugging along. Good examples would be Subarus or Toyota trucks. My grandparents just gave us their 1996 Toyota Tacoma truck that has 192000 miles on it and it works perfectly fine. The only thing wrong with it is that the speedometer is way off (shows you're going faster than you really are) because they'd put smaller tires on it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Smaller tires?  That's like trying to run Microsoft Office on a RISC (ARM) computer.  You are in danger of overheating the engine.