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Unpopular opinion ahead. Having worked in the security industry for a few thousand years (computer years), I can say I would never own a car that can talk to t
by LinuxBender 9y ago
Unpopular opinion ahead. Having worked in the security industry for a few thousand years (computer years), I can say I would never own a car that can talk to the internet. I plan to move far away from cities very soon for this and several other reasons. People will argue about this and meanwhile the "impossible" will happen, repeatedly. I just replaced the engine and transmission in my non internet vehicle and hope to get another 500k miles.
- joshl3253 9y agoYes, a self-driving car would probably be hacked in the future, plowing into pedestrians or drive off a cliff. However, what's the odds of that, compared to thousands of deaths caused by incompetent human? "In 2013, 3,154 people were killed in distraction-related crashes." [Source just google it].
- deeg 9y agoI understand your concern but right now 30k Americans die in car accidents. Will (potentially) hackable self-driving cars be any more dangerous than today? If you're that concerned about being involved in a car crash it seems to me that you should never leave the house.
- ori_b 9y ago> I understand your concern but right now 30k Americans die in car accidents. And a few thousdand died on September 11th, nearly 20 years ago. The collective fear from that made the world a far worse place than the actual death toll. If there's a terrorist attack that targets internet connected cars, what do you think the collective reaction might be?
- LinuxBender 9y agoPotentially, yes. Instead of 30k spread across one year, the very possible opportunity for 30k in one mass-hack exists. I will defer to others to debate this. Perhaps financial regulators, safety departments, transportation regulators, insurance companies, etc. This is a very complex topic that would quickly turn into banter here. Everyone will have to decide for themselves the risk factors as it pertains to them.
- deeg 9y agoThat's 30k potential deaths compared to 30k deaths right now, every year. If terrorist attacks on cars killed 20k/year it would still be much safer than our current situation. We should mandate that every vehicle death be broadcast on the front page of every national media outlet[1]; that might change our perceptions. I contend that 40 years from now our grandchildren will be astounded that we got into such dangerous vehicles before self-driving cars. [1] - I'm being facetious, of course.
- roywiggins 9y agoCrash all the self-driving ambulances, crash all the gasoline tanker trucks, crash all the trucks that ferry containers out of ports. You might not kill many people today, but when there's no shipping and no ambulance service people will start dying.
- jacquesm 9y agoIf you wanted to really disrupt society you don't need this level of sophistication or a lot of cash. A few thousand $ and a couple of months preparation time would be more than enough. Keep in mind that destruction and creation are extremely asymmetrical when it comes to the level of effort required.
- icc97 9y agoFacetiousness aside, this is where I hope car crashes would get to. They should be so rare that they do make the local news. They should be so rare we can treat them like airplane crashes and investigate each case to the same degree.
- ABCLAW 9y agoThe issue isn't the 30k people dying in one set of crashes. It is the systemic issue caused if all of our transportation and shipping capacity went offline at the same time as all ICE refuel capacity in a nation was taken offline at the same time. If that happens, car crashes aren't the problem - it's the widespread famine that follows in a week's time.
- Balgair 9y agoIt's not even the tinfoil-hat issue, it's standard emergency issues. Think of the damage a hurricane does to wide swaths of coastal land. Think of being trapped in Napa last fall during the firestorms. Think of a bad blizzard or a lucky lightning bolt to the right transformer. At least once a year, I think there is a sizable portion of the US population, let alone world population, that needs unconnected emergency ready transport in under 2 days notice. Expecting people to pay $30k+ for a car and not have that baked-in is a no-go.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 9y agoHeh. I want a self-driving car. But I don't want an Internet-connected self-driving car. This trend of doing everything over the Internet for no good reason other than business model is growing from just ridiculous and user-hostile into something that's actually dangerous to people's lives.
- joe_the_user 9y agoLast I heard, Alphabet's solution to the problem of self-driving was a tying the cars very tightly to Google Maps - reliably using just camera and lidar to make driving decisions apparently still isn't sufficient for self-driving but having a map showing the logic of traffic flows makes the process much easier (quick googling seems to indicate many self-driving solutions are similar here). Thus it is going to be hard to avoid a network connected car and it seems likely that network will be the Internet.
- aurelian15 9y ago> Thus it is going to be hard to avoid a network connected car and it seems likely that network will be the Internet. Well, I agree that maps as a second source of information can be important for autonomous vehicles. However, I don't understand why "map" would imply "network connected". Offline navigation systems with detailed maps have existed and still exist for more than twenty years now. I fear that the "offline autonomous vehicle" will solely fail to manifest because of business decisions (online being "more convenient" for both the end-user and the company), not because of technical limitations.
- joe_the_user 9y agoWell, sure keeping maps offline could allow the connection to not be constant but the maps would require very frequent updating since being out of date could have dangerous consequences, and the updating would be most easily done by network. Edit: which is to say, maps aren't really secondary parts of current systems but more like "co-primary" parts. The cars aren't planning identify traffic lights where they don't expect them.
- csours 9y agoWhat make and model is your vehicle? If it's newer than the mid 2000's it can probably talk to the internet.
- LinuxBender 9y agoMy vehicle is ODB-II and can not talk to the internet. I was part of the OBD-III debates.
- quickman99 9y agoYes, but what car?
- incompatible 9y agoIt seems OBD-III was never implemented.
- csours 9y agoI'm sure you're aware of this, but for others, the ODB-II port generally connects to completely insecure internal networks - so anything that physically connects to it may compromise it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/01/15/researcher-says-progressive-insurance-dongle-totally-insecure/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/01/15/resea...
- LinuxBender 9y agoYup, and some insurance companies are convincing people to connect a cell phone fob to their OBD-II in exchange for lower insurance rates. In exchange, they have access to your cars computer, GPS coordinates, basically anything you do, they track. That also puts your CANBUS on their network.
- Slansitartop 9y agoI hear you, I just bought a new car and internet connectivity was a deal-breaker for me. Part of the reason I was in the market was I wanted to make sure to get one before it was impossible [1]. The dealers don't know about the cars at this level of detail. I had to use these questions to pry the data out of them: 1. Is this a connected car? Can I unlock it or start the engines from my smartphone? 2. Is that feature an option or is the feature part of the base model? 3. Can I get the connected feature later? Would I have to bring the car in to get something installed or can you enable them from your computer? #3 is a really important question. Subaru (and perhaps others) ship all their cars with the hardware for connectivity, but the actual feature requires a subscription. The car is always connected to the internet, because the dealer can start your subscription remotely, but the salesmen don't understand that implication. They're thinking solely in terms of features you're getting, not what hardware the car has. [1] It's almost impossible now to buy a new car without passive keyless entry that isn't a bottom-tier economy model, despite the well documented security problems with many of those protocols.
- benjaminjackman 9y agoWhat Make/Model/Years did you find that met your criteria?
- Slansitartop 9y agoI ended up getting a 2017 Honda Accord V6 with Sensing. I got everything that I wanted, but had to compromise and get passive keyless entry. The Toyotas Camrys also seemed good, except I couldn't find a V6 to test drive and they didn't have Android Auto. Just a note: I'm not super-paranoid about my car getting hacked. I didn't want a cellular modem because I know I won't use whatever features it enables, and I didn't want my car to be ransomed for a bitcoin. I didn't want passive keyless entry because it didn't seem like much of a convenience, and it weakens security against petty theft. My criteria, in priority order: Must haves: * V6 engine * No cellular modem * No passive keyless entry (not really available anymore, so I had to drop it as a dealbreaker) Nice to haves: * Android Auto/Carplay * Adaptive cruise control, etc.
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- SeeDave 9y ago>I plan to move far away from cities very soon for this and several other reasons. Are you comfortable with sharing your reasons? I feel similarly but do not have concrete plans quite yet.
- LinuxBender 9y agoPerhaps in another thread. I would derail this thread by extending the topic that much.
- quickman99 9y agoWould you do that? I am also interested.
- joezydeco 9y agoYour idea is sound, hopefully you have plans to service your car entirely by yourself? From my personal experience, the service departments will happily download data from your car and sell it to the highest bidder. My case was simple: the dealer updated the mileage record in Carfax using the odometer reading from my warranty-provided oil change. The car is leased, so I'm 99% sure I had no way to opt-out. Sounds innocent, but my insurance company was watching. They extrapolated the mileage and decided I would cross the 7,500 mi/yr threshold - which triggered a premium hike. Funny thing - I didn't exceed 7,500 miles that year, but they already have my money now. What else could a dealer read off your non-internet connected car when you bring it in?
- LinuxBender 9y agoThis is just my own methodology, but I ask the local police / sheriff who the most reliable mechanic is. I then validate the number of tattoos on their team members. They must have a lot of tattoos and they have to be grumpy and their shop must be in a state of disarray. If they meet my criteria, then I have them do the work I can not do myself. This usually works out to be much less costly than working with a car dealership. This is just my own unorthodox methodology. Your mileage may vary.
- deadmetheny 9y agoThis is a good method. My mechanic has giant WE THE PEOPLE and eagle tattoos, the shop's office is a disaster zone, and he does a hell of a great job at a reasonable price. Nice guy though, so he'd fail the grump test.
- mcguire 9y agoExtra credit if he has an ashtray in the waiting room that looks like a mariachi band made of taxidermied frogs. (The best transmission shop I even saw.)
- stickfigure 9y agoWoah. This comment deserves a blog post and its own thread on HN.
- romwell 9y agoUnpopular? Isn't this the take-away from the article? I thought that the article taught me nothing new at all, but then realized it did: it taught me how little the issue is understood by the regulators. I'd say that an attack like that is just a matter of time, if I didn't think that a mass-destruction scenario that leads to a legislative change wouldn't happen sooner due to a bug.
- phyzome 9y agoYou'll have a much easier time not owning a car that can talk to the internet if you stay in the city. I currently walk, bike, and take public transit. I could not do that if I moved out of the city.
- xya3453 9y agoThe cities are where all the autonomous weapons of mass destruction are.
- phyzome 9y agoSo your options if you don't want a computerized car are: - Live in the country and get really good at repairing standard transmission cars and dodging emissions inspections, or - Live in the city and get really good at dodging in general (it's a city, you'll learn that skill anyhow)
- Piskvorrr 9y agoDodging what? Cars? Planes? Blackouts? Not every threat can be evaded by nimble feet.
- or381083yjihoi 9y agoYou mean humans? Because there are currently no fully autonomous vehicles on the road where I live, and only a handful of Teslas.
- or381083yjihoi 9y ago> I plan to move far away from cities very soon for this and several other reasons. So you're going to move somewhere where you have to be on the road more, thus increasing the odds of your dying in an accident (unrelated to hacked autonomous vehicles). I'm gonna stick to my city that's building walk-able neighborhoods, and push to have autonomous cars relegated to certain corridors. You know, participate in society, rather than act like I'm a special who needs to be coddled, and avoid people due to lack of social skills. Go ahead and move though. Seems cowardly and self-righteous. Hey everyone, ship goods all the way to me! The one who would rather avoid you all, because my work experience has me convinced I can see the future. Computer nerds need to get better at stats and probabilities.