6 ms·

I'm all for rooting my phones, media devices, gaming consoles...but I think I'd stop short of rooting my car. I think back to the Toyota electronic throttle con

by wille92 10y ago

I'm all for rooting my phones, media devices, gaming consoles...but I think I'd stop short of rooting my car. I think back to the Toyota electronic throttle control system bugs--we can hardly trust manufacturers to develop robust automotive software on their own, long before rooting and customization are thrown into the mix. The media system modded in this post _should_ be completely separate from the "brains" of the car, but that's still not a risk I would take.

profeta 10y ago
nah. people have been modding throttle bodies and adding short shift to their cars for ages. it is the same thing.
eliaspro 10y ago
It's just a chroot. Thats far less dangerous than completely reflashing it etc
- brianwawok 10y ago
  So what happens when your app hits an infinite loop and locks the CPU? Or trashes some memory it shouldn't? Does autopilot still work? Do the airbags still deploy? Does the brake still work?
  - newjersey 10y ago
    It should. In a world where people routinely talk/text/drink and drive I don't think we should expect 100% from electric or self-driving cars. I cringe from the PR implications as I say this but really I fully supported Jeb! when he shrugged about one of the shootings. If we want freedom, we will have some missteps. I kind of wish we could say the same about religious extremists but that ship was always under command of the same bigots who controlled the conversation during the red scare.
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    The safety-critical stuff is not running on that computer. So the brakes still work, and the airbags deploy, for sure. I'd be very surprised if the autopilot is on there.
  - sweden 10y ago
    It is an interesting question. A while a go, 2 guys made a presentation at DEFCON with a presentation about their findings on hacking a Tesla Model S. They were able to successfully get root access to the car's system (not chroot, real full root access) and with that they were able to fully access to the car's API within Tesla OS. They even showed a video about one of the guys driving the car at low speed and the other one remotely accessing to the car's Linux shell by SSH and shutting down the whole car while the first guy was riding. The interesting thing is that for higher speeds, for example more than 50 km/h, the car seems to override any of the Linux systems and the root access becomes useless, it stops working. In another words, the car is able to decouple itself from the Tesla OS. You can check the presentation from those guys here: https://youtu.be/KX_0c9R4Fng?t=39m51s https://youtu.be/KX_0c9R4Fng?t=39m51s
    - pritambaral 10y ago
      While it is very reassuring that the car is able, the speedpoint chosen by Tesla – 50kmph — is not. I'd rather a car not be remote-controllable at anything more than a slow crawl, and 50kmph is quite capable of making such a heavy car dangerous.
      - sweden 10y ago
        I'm not sure what are the exact conditions for the Tesla OS to be overridden by other internal systems, 50 km/h was just a placeholder value for "lower speeds".
  - titomc 10y ago
    The one auto manufacturer that I was working for had hardware safety overrides for any software controlled remote operations. For example: Remote door unlock command issued by the mobile phone app will not work if the car is moving.
  - makomk 10y ago
    I'd hope so, since apparently the computer that's being hacked here occasionally crashes and restarts in normal operation with the official unmodified Tesla firmware.
  - Hemera- 10y ago
    I have never driven while running any of my stuff. Also, this is the CID, it doesn't control those things. You can even reboot the CID while you're driving.
  - ryao 10y ago
    Preemptive multitasking means that infinite loops in userland software do not lock the CPU. Everything that anyone would cal an app is run on a system that does preemptive multitasking, so it is not a problem. Presumably, the dashboard console computer is separate from the many other computers in the car for reliability purposes. If it is not, Telsa Motors would have really messed up.
  - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
    Again, this entertainment system that she hacked is completely separate from the driving system. You can literally reboot it while you are driving down the road. The screen goes black during reboot, the radio goes off, then it comes back in 10 seconds or so. I think maybe in the 4 years I've owned it once or twice it rebooted itself.
542458 10y ago
I wonder what happens when you get into a bad crash, somebody decides to sue, and it comes out that your car was running modified software. Would you be exposing yourself to any liability?
- mschulkind 10y ago
  Aren't you already liable for all damage in an at fault accident? If you modified it yourself, I'm not sure there's any blame that can be shifted around.
  - wolrah 10y ago
    If whoever you hit's lawyer manages to make a case that the accident was worse as a result of your modifications, you might have a problem.
  - masters3d 10y ago
    Not before tesla disables the car.:) from what I read, any kind of hacking can get your vehicle disabled.
- bravo22 10y ago
  I can imagine a few ways that you could. Say you installed a media player. Now you'll have to convince a jury that you didn't install a media player just so you could watch videos while driving, and therefore were distracted at the time.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    Most in-dash sat/nav units aren't allowed to play any video in most states. You can bypass/disable it, but that can run you into liability issues. I had a SatNav where an "unable to detect park gear" warning always showed up (I had a stick shift, so it the wires were connected to the hand-break). The guy at the shop couldn't figure out why it was shorting so he just disabled it and said, "Don't watch DVDs while driving." You know I never did use the DVD player in there ever, not even while parked, in the 5 years I had it.
orik 10y ago
If I recall correctly the part of the system this is running on is independant from anything important and only does media controls. It also speaks to the rest of the car over a network interface. But still not quite for the faint of heart.
- nekomancer 10y ago
  There have actually been a ton of examples over the years of researchers hacking into car systems wirelessly, some of which used the media system as the attack vector. Even if the media subsystem is running on dedicated hardware, the fact that it's networked with the rest of the car means that there's still a risk of it being used to gain access to other components.
  - radiorental 10y ago
    Which is worse, proprietary closed system from car manufacturer or OSS system. There's as many pros on one side as cons on the other.
    - nisa 10y ago
      False dichotomy - I think it should be similar to Kerckhoffs's principle in the long run. OSS yes, but it's signed and audited when it's able to run. Maybe like an open source version of microcode updates for CPUs. You could file a pull request because you spotted a bug but you can't fuck around your car (bad, but not so bad) and other cars (very bad). If the Toyota code would be public we'd hear a lot of guys screaming and if you own the car and have the knowledge I guess you are keen on looking. Sure lots of noise for manufactures and likely new attack vectors but in the end public universities could look at it. On the other hand you'll end up with OpenSSL for cars. However it should be still safe when public that what should be the design goal. However what you read about embedded stuff in cars and airplanes...OSS would be likely an improvement. I for one would like to file a pull request against the A380 firmware :)
      - radiorental 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
takeda 10y ago
Yep. Jeep Cherokee was hacked by connecting to multimedia system which supposed to be separate from driving system, yet our wasn't a problem. All they had to was reprogram one of controllers and full access was granted. Even if you don't reprogram controllers you don't have guarantee that some components won't go high wire when your modded version dies something different. The best approach would be if manufacturers would provide an air gap, but they probably won't, to save costs.
woodman 10y ago
> ...we can hardly trust manufacturers to develop robust automotive software on their own... All the more reason to root the device.
aidos 10y ago
OT but what was the deal with the Toyota thing? I read something about this on HN the other day and as far as I can see they were unable to reproduce the bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle_recalls#Electronic_throttle_control_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle... Would love to hear more about it from anyone who has more information.
- stagger87 10y ago
  This was my favorite read, https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...
  - aidos 10y ago
    Thanks! That picture of the ETCS board has just reminded me of a time my friend gave me a tour of the Mclaren F1 workshop – he worked on the testing team. They'd just spent a couple of weeks tracking down an issue where the engine had misfired during one of the races (like, once or twice). Turns out that the tracks on one of the control circuit boards were a tiny bit too close and there had been an arc. I couldn't believe how much work they had put into figuring it out.
    - extrapickles 10y ago
      Since they are limited to 5 engines per season[0], they were probably very worried that the fault could lead to the loss of an engine. When I did racing, for even the most minor of faults/errors/"that's odd", large amounts of effort were put into correcting the fault if it was on the list of "If this broke, we lost". [0]: http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/championship/inside-f1/rules-regs/Power_Unit_and_ERS.html http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/championship/... edit: grammar fix
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  The code was (probably typical) contractor spaghetti code, with plenty of potential bugs. But, no conclusive reproduction steps were ever found - much less any that would cause it to continue acceleration with the brakes on, transmission disengaged, or key off.
djsumdog 10y ago
If you read, he's running in a chroot within the TelsaOS (which I'm guessing controls a lot of the sensor in/outs for displays and can't really be removed). So it's like running an X server and external display on your Android in a chroot, so it looks like you're running Ubuntu and Android.
- karcass 10y ago
  she is running in a chroot
  - pronounsmatter 10y ago
    who even cares
- theoh 10y ago
  I'm sure everyone is aware of the fact that all kinds of potential quality-of-service crosstalk/resource utilization issues are not prevented by a chroot.
lazaroclapp 10y ago
You know some people mod the engine on their car, right? Or swap the transmission? Changing the software is hardly the most significant modification owners do to their cars, at least for non-self-driving cars ;)
- engiqueer 10y ago
  Thanks. ;)

by wille92 10y ago

profeta 10y ago

nah. people have been modding throttle bodies and adding short shift to their cars for ages. it is the same thing.

eliaspro 10y ago

It's just a chroot. Thats far less dangerous than completely reflashing it etc

brianwawok 10y ago
So what happens when your app hits an infinite loop and locks the CPU? Or trashes some memory it shouldn't? Does autopilot still work? Do the airbags still deploy? Does the brake still work?
- newjersey 10y ago
  It should. In a world where people routinely talk/text/drink and drive I don't think we should expect 100% from electric or self-driving cars. I cringe from the PR implications as I say this but really I fully supported Jeb! when he shrugged about one of the shootings. If we want freedom, we will have some missteps. I kind of wish we could say the same about religious extremists but that ship was always under command of the same bigots who controlled the conversation during the red scare.
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  The safety-critical stuff is not running on that computer. So the brakes still work, and the airbags deploy, for sure. I'd be very surprised if the autopilot is on there.
- sweden 10y ago
  It is an interesting question. A while a go, 2 guys made a presentation at DEFCON with a presentation about their findings on hacking a Tesla Model S. They were able to successfully get root access to the car's system (not chroot, real full root access) and with that they were able to fully access to the car's API within Tesla OS. They even showed a video about one of the guys driving the car at low speed and the other one remotely accessing to the car's Linux shell by SSH and shutting down the whole car while the first guy was riding. The interesting thing is that for higher speeds, for example more than 50 km/h, the car seems to override any of the Linux systems and the root access becomes useless, it stops working. In another words, the car is able to decouple itself from the Tesla OS. You can check the presentation from those guys here: https://youtu.be/KX_0c9R4Fng?t=39m51s https://youtu.be/KX_0c9R4Fng?t=39m51s
  - pritambaral 10y ago
    While it is very reassuring that the car is able, the speedpoint chosen by Tesla – 50kmph — is not. I'd rather a car not be remote-controllable at anything more than a slow crawl, and 50kmph is quite capable of making such a heavy car dangerous.
    - sweden 10y ago
      I'm not sure what are the exact conditions for the Tesla OS to be overridden by other internal systems, 50 km/h was just a placeholder value for "lower speeds".
- titomc 10y ago
  The one auto manufacturer that I was working for had hardware safety overrides for any software controlled remote operations. For example: Remote door unlock command issued by the mobile phone app will not work if the car is moving.
- makomk 10y ago
  I'd hope so, since apparently the computer that's being hacked here occasionally crashes and restarts in normal operation with the official unmodified Tesla firmware.
- Hemera- 10y ago
  I have never driven while running any of my stuff. Also, this is the CID, it doesn't control those things. You can even reboot the CID while you're driving.
- ryao 10y ago
  Preemptive multitasking means that infinite loops in userland software do not lock the CPU. Everything that anyone would cal an app is run on a system that does preemptive multitasking, so it is not a problem. Presumably, the dashboard console computer is separate from the many other computers in the car for reliability purposes. If it is not, Telsa Motors would have really messed up.
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  Again, this entertainment system that she hacked is completely separate from the driving system. You can literally reboot it while you are driving down the road. The screen goes black during reboot, the radio goes off, then it comes back in 10 seconds or so. I think maybe in the 4 years I've owned it once or twice it rebooted itself.

542458 10y ago

I wonder what happens when you get into a bad crash, somebody decides to sue, and it comes out that your car was running modified software. Would you be exposing yourself to any liability?

mschulkind 10y ago
Aren't you already liable for all damage in an at fault accident? If you modified it yourself, I'm not sure there's any blame that can be shifted around.
- wolrah 10y ago
  If whoever you hit's lawyer manages to make a case that the accident was worse as a result of your modifications, you might have a problem.
- masters3d 10y ago
  Not before tesla disables the car.:) from what I read, any kind of hacking can get your vehicle disabled.
bravo22 10y ago
I can imagine a few ways that you could. Say you installed a media player. Now you'll have to convince a jury that you didn't install a media player just so you could watch videos while driving, and therefore were distracted at the time.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Most in-dash sat/nav units aren't allowed to play any video in most states. You can bypass/disable it, but that can run you into liability issues. I had a SatNav where an "unable to detect park gear" warning always showed up (I had a stick shift, so it the wires were connected to the hand-break). The guy at the shop couldn't figure out why it was shorting so he just disabled it and said, "Don't watch DVDs while driving." You know I never did use the DVD player in there ever, not even while parked, in the 5 years I had it.

orik 10y ago

If I recall correctly the part of the system this is running on is independant from anything important and only does media controls. It also speaks to the rest of the car over a network interface. But still not quite for the faint of heart.

nekomancer 10y ago
There have actually been a ton of examples over the years of researchers hacking into car systems wirelessly, some of which used the media system as the attack vector. Even if the media subsystem is running on dedicated hardware, the fact that it's networked with the rest of the car means that there's still a risk of it being used to gain access to other components.
- radiorental 10y ago
  Which is worse, proprietary closed system from car manufacturer or OSS system. There's as many pros on one side as cons on the other.
  - nisa 10y ago
    False dichotomy - I think it should be similar to Kerckhoffs's principle in the long run. OSS yes, but it's signed and audited when it's able to run. Maybe like an open source version of microcode updates for CPUs. You could file a pull request because you spotted a bug but you can't fuck around your car (bad, but not so bad) and other cars (very bad). If the Toyota code would be public we'd hear a lot of guys screaming and if you own the car and have the knowledge I guess you are keen on looking. Sure lots of noise for manufactures and likely new attack vectors but in the end public universities could look at it. On the other hand you'll end up with OpenSSL for cars. However it should be still safe when public that what should be the design goal. However what you read about embedded stuff in cars and airplanes...OSS would be likely an improvement. I for one would like to file a pull request against the A380 firmware :)
    - radiorental 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

takeda 10y ago

Yep. Jeep Cherokee was hacked by connecting to multimedia system which supposed to be separate from driving system, yet our wasn't a problem. All they had to was reprogram one of controllers and full access was granted. Even if you don't reprogram controllers you don't have guarantee that some components won't go high wire when your modded version dies something different. The best approach would be if manufacturers would provide an air gap, but they probably won't, to save costs.

woodman 10y ago

> ...we can hardly trust manufacturers to develop robust automotive software on their own... All the more reason to root the device.

aidos 10y ago

OT but what was the deal with the Toyota thing? I read something about this on HN the other day and as far as I can see they were unable to reproduce the bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle_recalls#Electronic_throttle_control_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle... Would love to hear more about it from anyone who has more information.

stagger87 10y ago
This was my favorite read, https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...
- aidos 10y ago
  Thanks! That picture of the ETCS board has just reminded me of a time my friend gave me a tour of the Mclaren F1 workshop – he worked on the testing team. They'd just spent a couple of weeks tracking down an issue where the engine had misfired during one of the races (like, once or twice). Turns out that the tracks on one of the control circuit boards were a tiny bit too close and there had been an arc. I couldn't believe how much work they had put into figuring it out.
  - extrapickles 10y ago
    Since they are limited to 5 engines per season[0], they were probably very worried that the fault could lead to the loss of an engine. When I did racing, for even the most minor of faults/errors/"that's odd", large amounts of effort were put into correcting the fault if it was on the list of "If this broke, we lost". [0]: http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/championship/inside-f1/rules-regs/Power_Unit_and_ERS.html http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/championship/... edit: grammar fix
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
The code was (probably typical) contractor spaghetti code, with plenty of potential bugs. But, no conclusive reproduction steps were ever found - much less any that would cause it to continue acceleration with the brakes on, transmission disengaged, or key off.

djsumdog 10y ago

If you read, he's running in a chroot within the TelsaOS (which I'm guessing controls a lot of the sensor in/outs for displays and can't really be removed). So it's like running an X server and external display on your Android in a chroot, so it looks like you're running Ubuntu and Android.

karcass 10y ago
she is running in a chroot
- pronounsmatter 10y ago
  who even cares
theoh 10y ago
I'm sure everyone is aware of the fact that all kinds of potential quality-of-service crosstalk/resource utilization issues are not prevented by a chroot.

lazaroclapp 10y ago

You know some people mod the engine on their car, right? Or swap the transmission? Changing the software is hardly the most significant modification owners do to their cars, at least for non-self-driving cars ;)

engiqueer 10y ago
Thanks. ;)