Today's ALL NU CARZ R SHIT topic: Death by hacksident.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

Right, RT do point out that there is no real evidence that hacking has occured in this instance, but I reckon the fact that it's possible to do it is rather scary by itself! Therefore I conclude that ALL NU CARZ R SHIT. Discuss (or disgust!).

 

http://rt.com/usa/michael-hastings-cyber-car-218/

 

Hastings died last week when his 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe collided with a tree in Los Angeles, California on the morning of June 18. He was reportedly traveling at a high rate of speed and failed to stop at a red light moments before the single-car crash. He was only 33.

Speaking to Huffington Post this week, Clarke said that a cyberattack waged at the vehicle could have caused the fatal collision.

"What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag," Clarke told The Huffington Post. "You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it's not that hard."

"So if there were a cyberattack on the car  and I'm not saying there was," Clarke continued, "I think whoever did it would probably get away with it."

[Junkman]

ALL NU CARZ R SHIT.

 

And have been since 1986. I never needed more proof than merely looking at them.

[Split_Pin]

No worries on my car then, everything is manual.

[Lukas]

Can´t happen to 3 of my 4 cars, so I might be safe.

[Rocket88]

Probably caused by two nuns and a kitten wedged under his brake pedal....................

[Cavcraft]

Maybe he was driving too fast and jumped a red light?

[Mr Lobster]

Hacked my arse. He was driving too fast, went through a red light and hit a tree. Then he died.

 

End of story.

[cort16]

There was some evidence that the cruise control system on the old Ford Explorers could be jammed on putting the car on full throttle if a stray radio wave of the correct frequency brushed passed the car.

 

I suppose it's not impossible for something like the Merc to do this through some internal failure. The throttle's fly by wire so when you put your foot on the peddle it sends a signal to the computer that decides how much to actually open the throttle, how much juice to spray in etc. I guess if this got it's knickers in a twist it could open the throttle but I imagine there are alot of safety fall backs in the system that stop this happening.

 

As for the car being hacked, that's a load of bollocks. You'd need to be up close with the diagnostics software plugged into the car, even if you could connect to it remotely you couldn't actually depress the throttle. The most proactive thing you could do it turn the EML light off.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

ROMANIAN CRIME GANGS HACKED INTO MY MORRIS ITAL’S ECU AND CAUSED THE TRUNNIONS TO SHUT DOWN

[cort16]

2013 Mercedes C250 coupe

 

 

 

This is my everyday car so I'll let you know if it kills me.

 

c220 by cort16, on Flickr

[Split_Pin]

ROMANIAN CRIME GANGS HACKED INTO MY MORRIS ITAL’S ECU AND CAUSED THE TRUNNIONS TO SHUT DOWN

Ha ha just made my day that did!

[gallondrunk]

I didn't expect to see a Michael Hastings conspiracy theory mentioned on here!

 

To the uninitiated, he was a journo who actually seemed to do journalism, as opposed to retyping press releases. He wrote about the surveillance apparatus in the US in particular, and before his death was suspicious that he was being targeted by the FBI.

 

Part of the mystery was the fact the car exploded, which in the days of modern safety with fuel cut offs and the like seems rather unlikely, but not impossible.

 

Foul play seems pretty unlikely to me, but who knows?

[jakebullet]

Check the bonnet for 3 holes where the jammer thing was. It works on the fast n furious films so why not real life?

[autofive]

Part of the mystery was the fact the car exploded, which in the days of modern safety with fuel cut offs and the like seems rather unlikely, but not impossible.

 

...............and how far the engine travelled after the crash.

 

witnesses report an explosion BEFORE the crash, the whole thing stinks of government assassination.

[FredTransit]

Ah the joys of not having any microchips. I feel smug....

Not saying if I agree withe the hacking thing or not, but if chips go wrong I do think bad things could happen.

[STUNO]

Why am I not dead. I have been riding in and driving cars since 1947. If they were worse than smoking cigarettes I am double lucky, but have no intention to give up driving yet.

[Lankytim]

I know with modern trucks and buses they can be remotely tinkered with by the dealerships in cases where they have broken down or sonething. I've been told of a Scania having a diagnostics run and then being started up by some guy in an office miles away. You never know....

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

This is my everyday car so I'll let you know if it kills me.

 

c220 by cort16, on Flickr

Please type this into your satnav.

10 IF trafficlight=red THEN goreallyfast
  PRINT "hAXXd by c0n31R4D"
20 ELSEIF trafficlight=green THEN stop
  PRINT "lol who is ur god now"
30 ELSE swervealloverroad

RUN (the lights)

[garethj]

Is this like the "death ray" thing that's been talked about since WWII where the baddies could fire a ray gun at a vehicle and do all kinds of things to its electrics?

 

It's a very interesting idea, and bang up to date with modern cars but when the alternative is "twat drove through a red light and crashed" I'd favour the more reasonable explanation.  It would be one hell of a hack code to disable the steering, the brakes, the gearshift and make it impossible to turn the key off.

 

If the point was to do away with someone, there are far easier ways to do it.

[castros_bro]

The "death ray" is an Electro Magnetic Pulse, EMP, and is the thing the septics were worried about during the cold war. As the West was making smaller and smaller electronics and using them to do safety critical things (eg fly by wire Tornado Aircraft or the Austin Maestro) they could be disabled easier and easier with a EMP, you can shield things in a "Faraday cage"  but there is always the power cables and antenna outside to conduct the pulse. However, at the same time the uber-shite USSR was still using the old fangled thermionic valves and being laughed as using technology that was years behind but, as it turns out, high immunity to EMP.  I think the American Star Wars system would have been based on EMP.   We had a close lightning strike during a sandstorm on a American 24 ton servo hydraulic vehicle  and one small positional detector failed so the ECU couldn't determine the suspension position so rammed the Detroit V8 diesel to the end stop, screwed up the pressure (300 bar) on three drive pumps, and opened the valves which fed this to one side of the hydraulic rams, the whole thing jumped in the air and the flexi hydraulic pipes burst, no oil, no load on the pumps,  screaming two stroke diesel and still the ECU was trying to adjust the suspension. Woops. Details of how to make a small directional EMP generator for research purposes are available and probably illegal to use on passing VAGtat.

[Spiny Norman]

I'm not entirely convinced a vehicle can be 'controlled' by outside forces, especially if the remote control facility hasn't been designed into it by the manufacturer.

There is no way into a car's system other than the physical connection of a computer, there is no wireless receiver and no means of on the fly adjustment either from what I understand.

 

The nearest thing I've heard of is that certain radio signals can randomly interfere with the ECU, but not in a way that would allow a predictable response. I remember years ago there was a radio transmitter that was deemed to be responsible for many unexplained breakdowns of the then newfangled ECU controlled cars like BMWs, Saabs, Mercedes etc, but as soon as the cars were moved away from the site and restarted they ran fine.

 

It all smacks of 'stupid Yank hitting the wrong pedal and crashing' syndrome to me.

[inconsistant]

This is nothing new. I was doing this to a Tamiya subaru brat in the 80s. Except the exploding bit. And the dying.

[chaseracer]

It all smacks of 'stupid Yank hitting the wrong pedal and crashing' syndrome to me.

 

Well, there ARE two to choose from...

 

[AnthonyG]

And have been since 1986. I never needed more proof than merely looking at them.

 

What's with 1986 mr junk man, what 'real' car did they stop making that year?

[Albert Ross]

Anyone remember the black and grey ignition modules on Vauxhall products of the mid 80s?  They used to cut out at red lights.... hence the all black replacements. What about Volvo 340 Variomatics with the throttles sticking?

[Pillock]

There was a proof of concept using, I think, American Ford cars a couple of years ago. Connect a device to the Bluetooth hifi and send a specific chain of information which crashes it. Because all systems are now linked together using canbus or similar you can then write information to devices.... Such as values to speed sensors. You can also use a similar method to unlock the doors.

 

This relied on having a specially adapted phone already paired up but it was quite astonishing what could be done.

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[CreepingJesus]

The Germans investigated two or three bad crashes in the late 80's, involving the original Mercedes 'PowerShift' trucks. They found in a couple of cases, that high-powered radar had caused the 'box ECU to freak out, and select neutral. Seems unlikely (or more likely, something you would hope wouldn't be likely), but the ECUs were moved and the shields changed, and no more problem.

Besides, if a super luxurious saloon has Bluetooth and WiFi kit on it, couldn't you just log onto it? Without leaving shit on the bonnet? Leave the driver freaky/spooky/abusive messages?

And if this generation are all Bluetooth and WiFi, and the previous generation were all USB; does that mean you could hack a Mk3 Cav by plugging an RS232 cable into the rear screen demister? But only up to 10m without a booster, iirc. So not much good for driveby car seizing.

[fiatdaft]

No need for such complication on a mk3 cavi !  And on topic,another stupid american lookig to sue most probably.

[autofive]

If you can make a mercedes crash in a tunnel (as a carbon copy of a plot engineered by MI6 to kill colonel gadaffi) then im sure the 51st state of the america could supply the software to cause this death.

[pandamonium]

I watched a Scooby Doo episode the other day where the Mystery Machine was being haunted (controlled by remote), so it must be true