Posted on 06/25/2013 1:40:40 PM PDT by KosmicKitty
Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post on Monday that the fatal crash of journalist Michael Hastings’ Mercedes C250 coupe last week is “consistent with a car cyber attack.”
“There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers” — including the United States — know how to remotely seize control of a car,” Clarke said.
On Saturday, Infowars.com posted a video of a talk presented by Dr. KathleenFisher, a program manager for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies. Fisher admitted that the Pentagon has researched remotely controlling cars through hacking on board computers.
In 2011, Car and Driver magazine published an article substantiating the Pentagon research. “Currently, there’s nothing to stop anyone with malicious intent and some computer-programming skills from taking command of your vehicle. After gaining access, a hacker could control everything from which song plays on the radio to whether the brakes work,” writes Keith Barry, citing research conducted by the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security, a partnership between the University of California San Diego and the University of Washington.
“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.”
Clarke was careful not to directly implicate the government in hacking Hastings’ car. “So if there were a cyber attack on the car — and I’m not saying there was,” he said, “I think whoever did it would probably get away with it.”
He also put credence in the FBI’s claim – despite claims to the contrary by associates of the writer – that the agency was not investigating him. “I believe the FBI when they say they weren’t investigating him,” said Clarke. “That was very unusual, and I’m sure they checked very carefully before they said that.”
“I’m not a conspiracy guy. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life knocking down conspiracy theories,” said Clarke. “But my rule has always been you don’t knock down a conspiracy theory until you can prove it [wrong]. And in the case of Michael Hastings, what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car cyber attack. And the problem with that is you can’t prove it.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence that Michael Hastings was targeted and assassinated for his journalism – most notably his story resulting in the fall of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and remarks on NSA surveillance – the establishment media continues to portray the attack on Hastings as the delusional meanderings of conspiracy theorists. Clarke’s comments serve as the latest pièce de résistance in an unfolding drama revealing just how far the government will go to silence critics and truth tellers.
Prior to his murder, Hastings said the Obama administration had declared war on the press. His desire to go into hiding – expressed in an email mere hours before his assassination – demonstrates the ability of the government to monitor opponents by using a well-developed NSA surveillance grid and take executive action against investigative journalists and others who dare to stand up to the national security state.
That's what makes me wonder about this accident.
As someone with a little background in software, taking control of the vehicle is plausible. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.
We’re all pretty sure Hastings was up to something someone wasn’t happy about. That’s made clear by his electronic trail and his associates. I also haven’t seen the media write this off as a conspiracy theory to that degree either (anyone calling MSNBC media doesn’t belong on this site). We have to also remember that many in the media are just scared too - but don’t expect to hear that on the evening news.
Taking Hastings out in this fashion sends a message not because of the means, but simply because it happened, and most suspect it wasn’t an accident.
With that said, if you can remotely start, stop, unlock an get an email report from your vehicle, digital logic dictates it can be controller remotely if you know how to get in. However, there are overrides even in the latest vehicles or within the driver, e.g. emergency brakes, or simply brushing against other vehicles causing enough damage to slow yourself down.
On another note, I remember being told by someone whose parents survived tyranny that one of the hallmarks of a tyrannical state is when journalists become targets of the state, then start vanishing.
Just sayin’.
We had a long thread on this last night that got deleted.
Cyber attacking a car is very doable. It’s been done many times in tests.
That said, this recent revelation may be a Psy Ops to get people focused on this “outlandish” conspiracy in order to cover up something else.
There are easier ways to Breitbart someone.
As noted on Shep’s show, Hastings drove like a Grandma.
Btw, the body has been identified. According to the cornoner - by fingerprints.
Biggs has supposedly contacted Mercedes to find out if their cars normally blow up like that and eject the engine like that.
Has he had a response, yet?
Question: What is the liklihood of a car bursting into flame if it hits a tree? I don’t think it would burst into flame to burn the body beyond recognition - unless it was “helped” to burst into flame.
I rent quite a few cars at a local agency and a couple years ago, one of the guys behind the counter was telling me about a recent auto theft..... The fellow behind the wheel of the stolen car pulled on to a freeway with a cop in an unmarked car somewhere not too far behind him. A few exits down, the car thief pulled onto the off ramp but got caught in some bumper to bumper traffic. Once the guy was at a dead stop, the cop radioed to somewhere and onstar shut the engine down. The cop basically walked up to the car before the guy had even opened the door and arrested him.
“know how to remotely seize control of a car”
Total bullsh*t. Steering is not controlled by the computer nor is braking nor is gear selection including neutral.
He wasn’t just driving fast for fun. He believed he was being chased.
We're talking about automotive electronics here, though.
I'm a little familiar Cicero, and believe that only steering assist (power steering) has an indirect connection with computer control, and that is indirect - cut off engine power and the power steering assist goes away, as anyone who has lost power on a hairpin turn can attest. The power steering pump is driver by the engine drive belt. Turning off the engine remotely is probably quite possible in a new car. There has been talk of putting engine cutoff capability into new cars for use by police.
My wife, who clearly never listens to me and watches CNN, told me of a video she saw on CNN report on the Hastings auto crash, including interviews with witnesses, none of whom spoke much English. They described another car, perhaps an SUV, racing next to Hastings’ Mercedes, both at high speed, and forcing it off the road. My wife doesn't know enough to have a position on the politics surrounding Michael Hastings. She said the CNN announcer pointed viewers at the CNN Web site, but when my wife looked, the video and report were not to be found. Again, I have clear mistrust of our government but my wife doesn't; she wouldn't invent a CNN report
If anyone saw the CNN interview, or saw a video which supposedly showed the two cars (I guessed from a local video surveillance camera, but didn't see it myself) it would certainly be relevant. One of the allegations floating around is that Hasting’s next expose involved the Wahhabi Muslim Director of our CIA, John Brennan, who was certainly in the thick of the cover-up of the Benghazi CIA operation, and may have been running that operation. His exposure would certainly have precluded his appointment as CIA Director, particularly after his exposure as a Wahhabi convert, and the murder of his employee for "cauterizing" Obama's State Department (passport) documents. Anyone making a living writing exposes should have remote backup, as Hasting’s may have had, but which we will probably never learn about.
http://jalopnik.com/why-cars-explode-into-fireballs-and-why-they-usually-do-560552028
...That’s more than 5 vehicle fires caused by a collision every day. While most of those fires started in the engine and were less likely to be fatal, around 10% of the collisions that involved fire were because of a fire from the fuel tank or fuel line...
Not to mention that the computer system has to be shielded from RF or it would shut down every time it was in the presence of a strong radio field. It would have to be modified to allow external control.
Onstar can do a lot. I sat and watched a friend set up the computer in his car with the help of an onstar operator. The operator said that depending on how the car was equipped they could do pretty much everything but steer the car. My friend’s car wasn’t equipped for it but the operator said she could even tell how many people were in the car and could extrapolate from seat belts how many were in a car that wasn’t equipped with seat sensors.
Its cool technology but it comes with the threat.
>> “ Just about everything in a modern automobile nowadays is controlled by code.” <<
.
Not the steering gear.
One would have to be quite a weakling to lose control just because power assist is gone.
When the car is in motion, very little strength is needed to control the car. At rest, the situation is somewhat different.
Video surveillance is pervasive in most commercial and many residential areas in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Every other house in my neighborhood has video recording street activity since police, if they come at all, will only respond to burglaries where the criminal is in the house. Criminals know there will be no investigation, let alone prosecution, if no one is injured. Sadly, I speak from experience, where my stolen auto was found with receipts identifying the thief, phone number, address, web site (he provides a moving service) and the police didn’t want the papers, honestly saying they had no resources to investigate a case that wasn’t worth taking to court; understandable, but clearly indicating a growing lawless society.)
I think there’s a lot more than power steering that that could be interfered with. I suspect, although I don’t know for sure, that if you could hack into a car’s computer system you could probably cut out the brakes, except for the mechanical hand-brake, and I’m not sure if even that is entirely mechanical these days.
And you could probably mess with the steering. And I suspect put it on full acceleration.
None of those are normal processes, but if you have a computer involved in mechanical processes, between the cup and the lip as it were, then almost anything might be done by a really knowledgeable hacker. And, if necessary, they could send someone to crawl under the car the night before and make a few extra connections. Stuff that wouldn’t be too noticeable after the car had been wrecked.
While I agree with you Cicero, don't tell my wife she is a weakling (she is!). When my drive belt broke she was just turning into an intersection, and had the impression the steering had locked. The car was moving slowly, and had there been oncoming traffic, she claims she would have hit it head on. I believe, but she didn't report, she lost the power brake assist as well. But the engine was still running, and she was only a block from home, or the car would have overheated, since the water pump is also driven by the universal drive belt. She discovered she could wrestle the steering sufficiently to negotiate the turn around the block, but steering systems with front wheel drive is not what it used to be - not like driving a VW or my old MG.
You probably know that there has been research for decades into automobile guidance, either usually based upon sensor strips embedded in the road or beside the road. Those technologies do require full vehicle control, but are not ready for prime time. We have had enough trouble controlling trains where steering is not an issue. The queuing theory problems turned out to be daunting. The multi-billion dollar Bay Area Rapid Transit was designed for automated thirty second intervals between trains over forty years ago, but the computer control technology wasn't nearly ready; neither were the computers, synchronization between them, nor the theoretical problems solved. Bart trains still have overpaid operators (at over 150k/year) who use radios to communicate how fast they can go and if there are obstacles ahead.
My impression from my wife's report of CNN broadcast on the Hastings crash is that there was a pursuit going on and Hasting’s car was pushed off the road as we've seen happen in action movies as stunt drivers and some police are trained to do.
“All your computer chips belong to us.”
Famous Chinese saying.....
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