Lawsuit counterproductive for automotive industry
It came to my attention that there is a lawsuit attempting to seek damages against automakers revolving around their cars being hackable (http://www.networkworld.com/article/2895535/microsoft-subnet/ford-gm-and-toyota-are-being-sued-for-dangerous-defects-in-their-hackable-cars.html). The lawsuit cites Dr. Charlie Miller’s and my work several times, along with several other researchers who have been involved in automotive security research. I’d like to be the first to say that I think this lawsuit is unfortunate and subverts the spirit of our research. Charlie and I approached our work with the end goals of determining if technologically advanced…
Life in the Fast Lane
Hi Internet Friends, Chris Valasek here. You may remember me from educational films such as “Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun”. If you have not heard, IOActive officially launched our Vehicle Security Service offering. I’ve received several questions about the service and plan to answer them and many more during a webinar I am hosting on February 5, 2015 at 11 AM EST. Some of the main talking points include: Why dedicate an entire service offering to vehicles and transportation? A brief history of vehicle security research and why…
A Dirty Distillation of Proposed V2V Readiness
Good Afternoon Internet, Chris Valasek here. You may remember me from such automated information kiosks as “Welcome to Springfield Airport”, and “Where’s Nordstrom?” Ever since Dr. Charlie Miller and I began our car hacking adventures, we’ve been asked about the upcoming Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) initiative and haven’t had much to say because we only knew about the technology in the abstract. I finally decided to read the proposed documentation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) titled: “Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications: Readiness of V2V Technology for Application” (https://ioactive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Readiness-of-V2V-Technology-for-Application-812014.pdf). This is…
Remote survey paper (car hacking)
Good Afternoon Interwebs, Chris Valasek here. You may remember me from such nature films as “Earwigs: Eww”. Charlie and I are finally getting around to publicly releasing our remote survey paper. I thought this went without saying but, to reiterate, we did NOT physically look at the cars that we discussed. The survey was designed as a high level overview of the information that we acquired from the mechanic’s sites for each manufacturer. The ‘Hackability’ is based upon our previous experience with automobiles, attack surface, and network structure. Enjoy!
Hacking Washington DC traffic control systems
This is a short blog post, because I’ve talked about this topic in the past. I want to let people know that I have the honor of presenting at DEF CON on Friday, August 8, 2014, at 1:00 PM. My presentation is entitled “Hacking US (and UK, Australia, France, Etc.) Traffic Control Systems”. I hope to see you all there. I’m sure you will like the presentation. I am frustrated with Sensys Networks (vulnerable devices vendor) lack of cooperation, but I realize that I should be thankful. This…
Hacking US (and UK, Australia, France, etc.) Traffic Control Systems
Probably many of you have watched scenes from “Live Free or Die Hard” (Die Hard 4) where “terrorist hackers” manipulate traffic signals by just hitting Enter or typing a few keys. I wanted to do that! I started to look around, and while I couldn’t exactly do the same thing (too Hollywood style!), I got pretty close. I found some interesting devices used by traffic control systems in important US cities, and I could hack them 🙂 These devices are also used in cities in the UK, France, Australia, China, etc.,…
Car Hacking 2: The Content
Does everyone remember when those two handsome young gentlemen controlled automobiles with CAN message injection (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqe6S6m73Zw)? I sure do. However, what if you don’t have the resources to purchase a car, pay for insurance, repairs to the car, and so on? Fear not Internet! Chris and Charlie to the rescue. Last week we presented our new automotive research at Syscan 2014. To make a long story short, we provided the blueprints to setup a small automotive network outside the vehicle so security researchers could start investigating Autosec…