Posted on 06/27/2013 1:02:15 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
Following the death of Rolling Stone and BuzzFeed contributor Michael Hastings in a fiery car crash, and the subsequent revelation of a panicked email he sent to his colleagues just before he died, this question has arisen: could someone have hacked his car? That's unlikely, and here's why. P
Hastings' 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe crashed into a tree on Highland Ave. in Los Angeles around 4:30 am on June 18. The car burst into flames, and it took the coroner two days to positively ID Hastings' body. P
It sounds like perfect fodder for a good conspiracy theory. After all, Hastings was a heavy hitter whose 2010 Rolling Stone piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal ended the Afghan war chief's career and sent shockwaves through the defense community. He had enemies, and his final email implies he was working on something huge related to the NSA and FBI, and that "the Feds" were interviewing his associates. If you believe the government does that kind of thing, it almost sounds like Hastings was taken out somehow.P
But how exactly? Speaking to the Huffington Post, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke claimed that "what is known about the single-vehicle crash is 'consistent with a car cyber attack.'"P
Clarke said, "There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers" — including the United States — know how to remotely seize control of a car.
"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 cyber attack on the car — and I'm not saying there was," Clarke added, "I think whoever did it would probably get away with it."P Related
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Clarke also says that because the "dozen or so computers" on board the Mercedes melted, it's even harder to trace who may have committed such an act. That's true. University researchers have found ways to crash car computer systems in the lab and there's no reason to believe government agents haven't also figured out how to do the same thing.P
But there are many, many reasons we need to be stay away from this theory in this case for now. As the Los Angeles Times notes, law enforcement officials are "weeks away" from determining the exact cause of Hastings' death, including what happened to the car and how fast it was going. P
Moreover, car hacking seems to be the most in vogue fear du jour among Americans lately, what with AOL positing that terrorists are capable of seizing your car's computer remotely and turning it into a high-speed death machine. P Related
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Our own Jason Torchinsky did a thorough debunking of why this is so unlikely, including how modern cars' internal networks aren't normally equipped to receive wireless instructions and how it's absurd to think that mechanical systems can somehow be easily overridden by a remote signal. P
Put simply, car hacking isn't what people think it is. You most likely have to have access to a car, then install software, then break through the car's systems. If Clarke is basing his analysis on the university research and not some secret government information, then he should also know that right now this isn't easy.P
It's actually more plausible to think that someone could have physically tampered with Hastings' Mercedes rather than "hacked" it. You could argue that this would also be a form of "hacking," perhaps literally hacking at cables, but we'll have to wait and see if there's more evidence of this.P
We need to wait until all the facts are in before we start buying in to conspiracy theories because no one has been able to dismiss the most obvious theory: Hastings was working on a big story, as he often did, and then he was involved in a car crashed caused by driver error, speeding, alcohol or some other factor.P
It could just be a coincidence, and a very unfortunate one that cost the world an immensely talented and dogged reporter. It could also be the clever and malicious work of government agents.P
We simply don't know yet. And it's not fair to the memory of a man who dedicated his life to uncovering truth for us to blindly buy into the latest thing we're told to be afraid of.P
He was brietbarted
Likely or unlikely, I’m betting post it notes are making a comeback in newsrooms across America.
If that article was meant to debunk the conspiracy theory the author did an extremely poor job of presenting any info to support his case.
It’s certainly possible that the car was hacked, but I don’t think it was done wirelessly without prior preparation.
If someone got access to the car for a time, maybe only a few minutes, relatively simple wirelessly controllable devices could be installed that would override the driver’s control of the throttle and possibly also the electric power steering assist.
These are “drive by wire” cars in which the physical throttle is operated by an electric motor.
This would be enough to create an accident situation, and to set off the bomb that they also installed.
Oh wait, OnStar says it can stop a car from being stolen by gradually slowing it down until it stops.
Should we believe the converse can't be done?
You can have a car equipped with onstar shut off on command by police (they advertise such for anti theft ). What else can one control?
Actually it's quite easier than that.
Just drop in a re-programed CPU which would be instructed to go full throttle after the car reaches, say 50 mph indicating that it is on a highway.
And from my understanding you can also disable the transmission from changing gears.
Alcohol, drugs or falling asleep at the wheel. None of those are plausible for a 4am crash at all.
I’ve read that it’s very rare for an accident, even one involving high speeds, to result in the type of intense fire that this one did.
Whatever was done to control the car, there was something else involved. A bomb is the most likely. A drone strike is also possible.
They wanted the make sure the driver was killed in a plausible way, and any physical evidence destroyed. A simple car crash might not have done that.
That stated, although I know none of the specifics of automotive computing systems, their instruction sets and 'operating systems' that may be employed to operate them, my opinion is that hacking into one for the purpose of creating a remote-controlled death car is preposterous. And damned-near impossible.
This is stuff for people who believe everything they see in action-adventure movies, CSI, McGuyver and Monk -- entertaining, but riddled with patently preposterous miracle technology that stretches the capabilities of existing equipment into the absurd. Computers can be built and programmed to do just about anything. But the key word is 'built'. You don't just decide that you're going to 'hack' a specific-purpose industrial computer into a perpetual motion machine or use it to spin straw into gold.
"Plowing-through" a utility pole saved a 260Z driver from dying in my front yard.
Was he being chased?
The car was seen speeding into a tree, I believe. A bomb or missile strike would have been after the high speed crash into the tree.
Supposedly, witnesses that saw him running red lights said there was no one chasing him.
Maybe they didn’t think to look up.
That’s a useless story—nobody has suggested that some 14yo in Indonesia did him in.
I agree. In years past I was a nationally licensed race track safety worker (flagging and communications) as well as being a certified first responder and firefighter.
I observed MANY high-speed wrecks in a class called Showroom Stock, aptly named as well as in the Improved Touring class. Fiery violent wrecks are memorable and I have no recollection of any fires like this one. Sure we had fires from resulting oil and fuel leaks, but NEVER like this. There were wrecks that had the motor flying out of the chassis, T-bones that were horrendously injuring, but none ‘exploded’ into flames.
You only get this sort of fire when the fuel tank is ruptured, NOT just leaking from a ruptured fuel LINE. It takes a lot of fuel to make a class B/A fire like his.
Unless he somehow spun the car and went into the tree tail first, a ruptured tank is highly unlikely.
We had a horrendous crash in my area where a street racer rear ended a much slower car, destroyed the car, and killed a little girl, but there was no fire at all.
He will be spending quite a few richly deserved years in jail, by the way.
The car computer is not usually EASILY ACCESSIBLE. If the car was in the shop, one COULD replace the entire computer BOX, but not the individual CPU chip.
HOWEVER, IF one could gain access to the interior of the car without setting off the alarms, all one has to do is drop in the proper CD into the CD player.
Not completely useless. This was the first I learned of the incident. This article was such an obvious attempt to cover something up, I had to read further. I’m probably not the only one who was introduced to this hot mess by this dishonest article. So you see, it wasn’t completely useless.
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