Posted on 07/30/2015 3:33:05 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In a recent WIRED article, security researchers Runa Sandvik and Michael Auger tackled just that issue. The wife and husband duo purchased two $13,000 TrackingPoint rifles and spent the last year reverse engineering and hacking the rifles’ computers. The two plan to present their research at the Black Hat hacker conference in two weeks, according to the article.
TrackingPoint bills itself as a company comprised of “lifetime NRA members and engineers.” The products sold on its website seem standard enough when it comes to a gun company: bolt-action rifles, semi-automatic carbines, etc. The “5.56mm semi-auto,” basically a M16-type rifle, costs more that $7,000.
The rifles boast a setup that looks ripped right from the future. The company even mentions that some of the technology used in its rifles is also used to help fighter jets lock on to their targets.
Though advanced, the weapons are not secure. Using a WiFi connection, Sandvik and Auger figured out how to reprogram the rifles scope, disable the ballistic computer and even prevent the weapon from firing. In one test, the couple tricked the onboard computer into believing a .4-ounce bullet weighed 72 pounds, throwing the reticle, and subsequently the shot, off significantly.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Tracking Point is out of business. They folded up shop a couple of months ago.
Some of those old Mausers are deadly accurate.I shot a woodchuck(head shot)at 250 yards with my M41 Swede sniper.He didn’t even twitch.
Good grief!
Found a clip of someone shooting one:
C Sharps 50-140 cal rifle...first shots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2e71aD5bFI
Kind of hard not to develop a flinch when your rifle has the recoil of a 10 gauge mag.
I have a Siamese mauser 98 chambered in .45-70.Since the action is so strong I can fire some pretty stout loads safely.Like a Lyman 500 grain cast bullet at 1800 fps.That would kill the biggest grizzly that ever walked if you hit him in the right place.And yes,the recoil for that load is a challenge.
Yeah, well put us in an urban warfare setting, say Obama’s sons running all over Chicago. I’ll take my AK47 over that. For one thing it won’t break. And I don’t think that all that electronic crap is going to be of much use on city blocks where the bad guys are at 50-100 yards and jumping out from behind cars and buildings.
I want a carbine that is like a Timex watch. Takes a lickin and keeps on tickin.
I’m guessing my Unertl 20X scope will be unaffected.
Their ads were in Guns and Ammo just a few months ago!
Best you wait way out in the woods where a scoped weapon would win.
I salute you, sir.
AK-47 or SKS works well in that scenario.
I’ll be waiting in the tree line with 500 yards of open ground in front of me.I can cover my house and farmstead from that position.
If you have the choice and opportunity to do that.
I’m thinking that in most of the real world there is going to be a lot more survival value in my AK and my shotgun.
More like ass-less chaps and codpieces. ;)
My FIL bought a M41 for $50.00 back in the day(owned
a wholesale sporting goods and hardware) but wouldn’t
Spring the 25.00 for the matching scope.
OTH he killed more white tail than I have probably seen with his
Swede 6.5’s.
M41 is still in safe all original.
I paid 140.00 for mine back in 1977.The gun will shoot as good or better than my M1A National Match which I paid 2000.00 bucks for.It also gives my Remington 700 Police Sniper a pretty good run for it’s money.I’ve got 4 other Swedes including an original M94 carbine,but the M41 is in a class of it’s own.
Waste
Of
Money
He tricked out a nearly dead M38 and gave it to me for a Christmas
present. I cried like a baby. God I miss him
I remember when you could buy those for a dollar back in the early 1960s. Most Civil War vintage and some later Mauser versions.
From Zulu Dawn (1979)
Corporal Storey: [to the soldier next to him, referring to the ammunition] Soft ‘eaded buggers these. Flatten out against the bone. Smash ‘em out.
Storey’s mate: But bullets run out... and those bloody spears don’t.
Well, mine surely can’t be hacked. It doesn’t have any electronics on it.
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