The world’s largest brick? Photo: Trucktrend
Posted on 12/12/2014 12:31:08 AM PST by Swordmaker
Having done that, he has now moved onto exploring vulnerabilities in other vehicles — including his new 2014 Cherokee jeep. All that research comes at a high price, however, since Miller recently revealed on Twitter that he has managed to “brick” his vehicle, after hacking the head unit. As he put it, “This is an expensive hobby.”
Miller had previously deemed the 2014 Jeep Cherokee one of the vehicles most vulnerable to hackers, alongside the 2015 Cadillac Escalade. His own research was therefore designed to explore the extent of this vulnerability.
He has rated the vehicle hackable based on the number of features that can be hacked (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile network connections, key fobs, and tyre pressure monitoring systems), the network architecture (giving access to a vehicle’s critical systems, such as the horn, the steering and brakes), and also features such as automated braking, and parking sensors that can be controlled using wireless commands.
Unfortunately, the car head unit he hacked most recently controls functions including the radio, heater, heated steering wheel and seats, rear camera, and sat-nav — leaving Miller with a vehicle best described as “downright primitive.”
After a trip to the automotive shop, where the head unit was replaced, Miller tweeted that, “This is another example of why car research is hard. One little mistake costs you a week and big bucks.”
The hacking appears to have paid off, though, since Miller has determined that his jeep’s software is still vulnerable to jailbreak bug he originally discovered months back.
In the tiny corner of the automotive world that I am directly familiar with, complete reflashes are done routinely at dealerships, most often as a result of software updates from the factory, but also when customers tamper with their cars by altering settings, or installing aftermarket engine programming that increase power, defeat speed/rev limiters, etc.
My point is that dealerships don’t always do repairs in the most cost effective way for the customer. If they can make more money by replacing or exchanging a car computer rather than reflashing it, many will do just that.
Well, it was some years ago. Perhaps they’ve come into the 21st century finally.
Other than the aftermarket distributor I just dropped in, my 65 has no electronics either:
http://tysonneil.smugmug.com/Cars/1968-Project-Willys-CJ5/i-2ssMtKZ/A
Getting that distributor to work involved a little more effort than the directions offered. Granted everything is keyed and goes one way, in my case after some grief and heartburn a little more.
Come to find out that I had to turn the distributor a lot more than the retainer plate allows. I dropped it in without the plate out of desperation and found the range it would run. That was a couple of days ago. I plan to modify the retainer or make a new one this weekend.
It certainly didn’t stumble or lag with the new one which confirmed my suspicion about not enough or maybe not any advance. The old distributor was weights only, no vacuum port.
“Well, it was some years ago. Perhaps they’ve come into the 21st century finally.”
Steer by wire, brakes by wire, etc, are just around the corner. Once these technologies come on-line the risk (and consequences) will really go up.
Kind of hard for someone to do to you as you drive down the road.
Not really. plug in a cell to the USB port and have at it. The thing is, the tech is all there to make it as easy as a trip to a computer/cell store. The hardware is easy to get. Most people have it already. So you can imagine whats available for people whose job it is to do exactly this sort of thing.
“People laughed when we said years ago when they began computerizing everything this would happen eventually”
It’s not going to be a laughing matter when some SOB hacker hacks in and burns my toast in my internet connected device.
But just how far are the gangsters running the Obama administration willing to take their attacks against our supposedly free press? After the murderous Operation Fast and Furious, it must be assumed that the Obama administration countenances the deaths of innocent foreign civilians—as long as their murders can be falsely attributed to evil American gun stores and the outdated Second Amendment of the Constitution. So by the end of 2014, it must be accepted as a given that the Obama administration has already crossed the murder Rubicon.
What about well-known but “unreasonable” individual investigative reporters? Just how far would the Obama administration go to silence them?
Journalist Michael Hastings had authored the award-winning Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal that led to McChrystal’s resignation. According to Atkisson, Hastings had also been screamed at and cursed out by White House press flacks. She said that Hastings also believed he was being targeted by the administration, and he spoke of their “insidious response...when you piss off the powerful. They come after your career; they try to come after your credibility. They do cocktail party whisper campaigns. They try to make you controversial. Sadly, the Powers That Be are often aided by other journalists.”
Atkisson relates a Huffington Post interview in June 2013 with the former U.S. national counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, where he said that the intelligence agencies are able to remotely seize control of a modern automobile through a ‘car cyber attack,’ by hacking into their computer modules through their cellular and Blue-tooth wireless connections.
Atkisson relates: “In that particular interview, Clarke is responding to questions about the fatal single car crash of reporter Michael Hastings, who was said to be researching a story related to the scandal that forced the resignation of CIA director Petraeus in 2012. Shortly before Hastings’s death, he reportedly said he thought the FBI was investigating him, which the FBI denied. Officials who investigated the car crash say no foul play was suspected and Clarke doesn’t dispute that. But Clarke says, hypothetically, ‘If there were a cyber attack on the car—and I’m not saying there was—I think whoever did it would probably get away with it’.”
So in 2012, Hastings was known to be working on a story about the forced resignation of CIA director Petraeus, and also about the current CIA director John Brennan. He expressed his fears about being spied upon by government intelligence services. And then he was burnt to an unrecognizable crisp when his Mercedes-Benz CLK 250 inexplicably accelerated to top speed, crashed into trees and burst into flames—without leaving any skid marks.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, Atkisson relates that even by 2010 John Brennan was rumored to be “behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources,” according to an email leaked from the intelligence-community-friendly private intelligence service Stratfor. In 2010, Brennan was the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. He became the new director of the CIA in January of 2013, after the sudden fall from grace of General Petraeus.)
Michael Hastings was another “unreasonable reporter,” judged so not only for the content of the stories he had reported in the past, but because, like Atkisson, he didn’t write for a conservative media outlet that could be dismissed as partisan. Was Michael Hastings murdered by some kind of an Obama White House “plumbers unit”, harkening back to Nixon, Watergate, and G. Gordon Liddy? After Operation Fast and Furious, is it still outrageous to suspect that corrupt members of U.S. intelligence or law enforcement agencies could have murdered Hastings “in the line of duty,” following secret orders from above?
It is truly a great pity that in stark contrast to the Nixon Watergate era, today’s American Pravda reporters are not interested in uncovering the truth, but instead, they are an integral part of the cover-up. Today’s Woodwards and Bernsteins are secretly taking their marching orders from Obama’s White House. Welcome to the USSA, comrades.
A link to the full-text Free Republic thread.
See #29 please.
What is the real intent of publishing this information? Puff piece for Apple and its “Oh So Clever” little elves? I am not trying to single out Apple, but we are awash in a sea of this bullsh!t.
See 29 please.
See 29. It does matter.
Gotta luv those 401’s.
Went through 3 of them along with a 425.
1963 Buick Riviera. Wished I still owned it!
Ping to thread.
But I'll keep reading, nonetheless. =;^)
Thanks.
bkmk
In what way is this a "puff piece for Apple?" This is a JEEP, Stentor. Charlie Miller is a computer expert who has happened to be the person who has successfully hacked OS X Macs and iOS in the White Hat hacker conferences in the last few years. . . and won the prizes. How does that make APPLE look good???
It is actually somewhat humorous and a warning that our electronics can bite us in the ass.
I suspect that I may have to say, "never mind".
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