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DARPA Hacks GM's OnStar To Remote Control A Chevrolet Impala

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Renegade:
Connected car? IoT? Oh, sure! This is totally gonna work out just peachy! ;D

http://jalopnik.com/darpa-hacks-gms-onstar-to-remote-control-a-chevrolet-i-1684593523

In a broad-reaching report by 60 Minutes about DARPA and the Internet of Things, the Department of Defense has shown that it can hack General Motors' OnStar system to remote control a last-gen Chevrolet Impala.9

DARPA has a budget of around half a billion dollars a year and its Information Innovation Office is headed by Dan Kaufman, who employs a team of researchers that focus on increasing national security through revolutionary projects. One of those projects involves hacking the connected car, and this is what they found:

[VIDEO]

According to the report, which is scant on technical details, DARPA engineers dialed in through the Impala's OnStar system, transmitted a data packet that confused the internal computers, and then planted a malicious bit of code that allowed it to reprogram control systems on the ECU.10

That allowed them to do everything from turn on the windshield wipers to honk the horn, and even controll the throttle and brakes, putting a hapless Lesley Stahl through a line of cones.11

The piece from 60 Minutes, which doesn't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to automotive reporting (and more), is bolstered by a report from the office of Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. The report, due out tomorrow, supposedly states that all new cars can be hacked and that, according to 60 Minutes, "only two out of 16 car makers can diagnose or respond to an infiltration in real-time."12131415

We're waiting to get our hands on the report from Senator Markey's office and have reached out to DARPA for more details on how the OnStar vulnerability was exploited. GM has yet to respond to a request for comment.

You can watch the full story from 60 Minutes here.

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More at the link with video.

This is why I want to buy 1 extra old beater car for $500 or so -- just to have something that isn't connected.

If you feel like going down the rabbit hole, just say "Michael Hastings" 3x in front of the bathroom mirror in the dark... ;)

Stoic Joker:
+10 on the old school - straight mech - classic, I'm shopping for a project now.


Military Rule of Combat:
If the enemy is in range...so are you. e.g. All connections are -(to be assumed as)- bidirectional.

Renegade:
+10 on the old school - straight mech - classic, I'm shopping for a project now.
-Stoic Joker (February 10, 2015, 06:32 AM)
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I will be in the project market pretty soon. We're almost ready for the big move, and one of those things that I'm looking forward to is getting back to having enough space to DO stuff.

The last while I've been going nuts on educating myself on all kinds of things for that. Too much to learn though... I'm guessing a lot will be "trial by fire". :)

Back to cars...

I definitely want at least 1 vehicle that can't be shut down out of the blue. Forget DARPA -- I remember what it was like to be 14, and building something to shut down all the cars within X radius would totally have been a "fun" thing to experiment with... We don't always think very clearly when we're 12 or 14.

40hz:
One problem is that law enforcement is actively pushing for a "remote disable plus tracking" feature to be built into all cars sold in the USA. They're arguing that this would increase public safety by removing the possibility for engaging in a high speed chase.

So...I suppose the getaway vehicle of choice will then become a motorcycle? Then what? (Oh right...we still have police drones so we can do an eye-in-the-sky if we need to go after those, right?)

As Stoic alluded to earlier, in any tit-for-tat tech exchange, the bad inevitably comes along with the good.

It never ends...and if it ever does end, it will end badly. :-\

Renegade:
As Stoic alluded to earlier, in any tit-for-tat tech exchange, the bad inevitably comes along with the good.
-40hz (February 10, 2015, 08:49 AM)
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All too often, it seems to precede the good...

it will end badly. :-\
-40hz (February 10, 2015, 08:49 AM)
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Yep.

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