My Old Car & Truck Are Here to Stay

[Jim Koepke]

Saw something about this on the TV the other night while walking outside. The grandkids were watching the TV so my attention was mostly on something else.

Looks like the new electronics in some cars can be hacked. There is an article in the online Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/07/22/hacks-on-the-highway/?hpid=z2

This sounds downright terrifying if some never do well creep decides to cause mayhem on the highway.

jtk

[Brian Tymchak]

Was thinking pretty much the same thing.. My old Tundra might have several more years in it vs the few that I had been planning.

[Bruce Page]

I saw that last night on the NBC Nightly News. Pretty darn scary.

[Brian Elfert]

Just buy a car without a way to connect to outside networks. Plenty of cars don't have these systems yet. I am 99% certain every car mentioned on this thread has a computer in it.

Even with my 1995 converted bus the engine and transmission are 100% dependent on computers to function, but nobody could possibly hack it unless they had physical access. I doubt anyone is going to come up with a hack for a totally obsolete engine computer that isn't hardly in use these days.

[Mark Blatter]

I read a similar story about the newer Samsung (and my guess is other brands too) TVs. They come with cameras and mics in them that can be easily hacked into. You are sitting their watching TV or using it to surf the web, all while creeps on the other end are watching and listening to you. There are many devices that have mics always on so you can use voice commands to start them up. If they are connected to the internet, which most are, someone, who knows who, can be listening to your every conversation. At work I use a laptop with a camera. First thing I did when I got it was tape over the camera and mic.

Call me paranoid, but just being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

[Jerome Stanek]

There was a story here on the news where the school system supplied laptops and then used the cameras to spy on the students

[Matt Day]

This sounds like a lot of media stirred paranoia to me, just like the computer camera hack. How any people do you know who have had it happen to them?

Maybe it's just me, but I don't let these kinds of things affect my day to day life.

[Tony Zona]

Believe it. If they want to do it, they can.

A beautiful bunch of programmers, in a town next door to me, wrote software that spies inside the home of people who rented computers. The story has twists and turns. Here it is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04/aarons-inc-spy-webcam_n_857317.html

[Curt Harms]

Probably a bit of sensationalism at work there. Makes a great story that creates a lot of buzz though, doesn't it?. One proposed solution:


Find the antenna for the system's receiver
Find the antenna's lead
Cut the lead.


It does seem kinda silly to me to have systems that can affect vehicle operation and safety connected to an outside network without an obvious way to disable or allow selectively. But this isn't the first time software bits have been granted more authority than IMO they should have.

[Tom Stenzel]

Probably a bit of sensationalism at work there. Makes a great story that creates a lot of buzz though, doesn't it?. One proposed solution:


Find the antenna for the system's receiver
Find the antenna's lead
Cut the lead.


Which will work until "your" car requires authorization to run. And you are only going to approved destinations, right?

-Tom