I have come to the conclusion that IF this was a hit by an intelligence agency it was probably done by hacking the Mercedes embedded systems using the bluetooth capabilities of both the car and Hastings smart phone.
I think it is pretty likely that the intel agencies have the source code for most cell and smart phones and also the source for the embedded systems in most cars.
If you have the source code for the ARM SOC in a phone and the baseband processor then the things you can do are amazing! Ditto for the source for the cars embedded processors.
If I was investigating the crash I would want a digital forensics lab to break the code protection on all the embedded chips in the car and the drivers phone so I could compare the dumps to the factory originals. If they do not match then there is a problem. Of course, if the devices continued to function after the crash the chip firmware may have been remotely re-written to cover all tracks.
I have NO inside knowledge of the facts here, just some suspicions based on my experience as an embedded system researcher.
BTW: If you have the source code for the ARM SOC in a phone and source for the baseband processor then you can do things like add the ability to operate out-of-band to the phone. This is useful for tracking someone because the cell frequencies are so overloaded with signals that individual devices cannot be monitored by satellite. But move out-of-band and the phone is now a remote controlled gizmo that allows all functions to be monitored from a sat... audio, video and all the rest. It is hard to discern such tampering since the firmware is very difficult to look at.
All I know is I would be totally shocked if intelligence agencies are not doing this kind of stuff. It’s what I’d be doing if I was tasked to track and control phones.
Wow. Very interesting possibilities indeed.
At one of the last security conferences someone displayed how they could take over an airliner with an android phone. Unnerving to say the least.
Services like OnStar give hackers an open door. It’s likely working off tcp/ip and once you have the address it’s an open port field day most likely.
You have a tech background, thus your argument is more solidly-based than the typical hysterical over-reach to blame some kind of “hacking” when Occams Razor suggests any number of alternatives. A forensic analysis is the only way to know for sure, and we (outsiders) will never know the results even if that is done. It would take a lot of work to overcome the internal partitioning between systems but I agree it could theoretically be possible to go thru the mobile network to a phone that could in turn act as a gateway via bluetooth to onboard embedded systems. But boy, that’s a lot of stars and planets that need to align perfectly. But, those with deepest pockets and unlimited resources would be the ones to do it, given sufficient motivation. Once you have a onboard telematics with RF capability in a vehicle, the slope gets a lot more slippery, and even a skeptic must admit the probability of such mayhem can’t be dismissed.
Your post proves there are many involved in this fraud. I don’t believe for a minute Obama is smart enough to pull all this off by himself. There is a huge machine behind him.
No one who knows, and can prove, the truth will come forward. If they “know” things, they also know they can be ruined or killed.
All a walk in the park if you can remote-update the phone firmware. It has a weak spot, if the update hits any snags you’ll often be left with a useless or impaired phone.