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In the way that it suddenly becomes technically plausible to make a certain % of vehicles turn into oncoming traffic on a Monday morning. OR Make every car on

In the way that it suddenly becomes technically plausible to make a certain % of vehicles turn into oncoming traffic on a Monday morning. OR Make every car on a particular road at a particular time, hit full speed and hit a particular target. Cars are like crap missiles so making them potentially exploitable is a bit risky.

spydum 7y ago
But even non OTA cars with lane assist and such have this same threat vector. If attacker compromise the vehicle code supply chain to introduce such a thing, whether it got loaded via OTA update or flashed by dealer when I took it in for service makes no major difference. If anything, it's more likely that OTA updates mean they can remediate REAL bugs that save lives across a vast majority of cars in record time (vs recalls and in person flashing).
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  over the air means automatic though. At least with dealer flashing, a poisoned chain has less impact because its slower and less broad. With a fully automated process you run the risk of it being a vector for terror attacks, Sure the point that non-OTA (i.e. just 'software in cars') still permits more localised attacks (e.g. assassination) but OTA represents a huge honey pot of power that I would argue is an inherent danger. I personally feel like there's a whole bunch of stuff we really shouldn't be automating and specifically attaching to auto-update until we've got a better handle on zero days as an industry.
  - spydum 7y ago
    Maybe I'm too optimistic but I think the net risk is reduced with more readily access to updates. The terrorism line just really doesn't strike me as a likely threat. Regular bug fixes and improvements to daily use are likely to save far more lives. Besides, there should be so many audit/checkpoints in front of the release chain, that scenario just seems implausible (but I do conceed that stuff can also fail or be bypassed- let's hope Tesla and other manufacturers have decent IS engineering)

spydum 7y ago

But even non OTA cars with lane assist and such have this same threat vector. If attacker compromise the vehicle code supply chain to introduce such a thing, whether it got loaded via OTA update or flashed by dealer when I took it in for service makes no major difference. If anything, it's more likely that OTA updates mean they can remediate REAL bugs that save lives across a vast majority of cars in record time (vs recalls and in person flashing).

Quarrelsome 7y ago
over the air means automatic though. At least with dealer flashing, a poisoned chain has less impact because its slower and less broad. With a fully automated process you run the risk of it being a vector for terror attacks, Sure the point that non-OTA (i.e. just 'software in cars') still permits more localised attacks (e.g. assassination) but OTA represents a huge honey pot of power that I would argue is an inherent danger. I personally feel like there's a whole bunch of stuff we really shouldn't be automating and specifically attaching to auto-update until we've got a better handle on zero days as an industry.
- spydum 7y ago
  Maybe I'm too optimistic but I think the net risk is reduced with more readily access to updates. The terrorism line just really doesn't strike me as a likely threat. Regular bug fixes and improvements to daily use are likely to save far more lives. Besides, there should be so many audit/checkpoints in front of the release chain, that scenario just seems implausible (but I do conceed that stuff can also fail or be bypassed- let's hope Tesla and other manufacturers have decent IS engineering)