17 ms·
Apparent hackers behind Kia ransomware attack demand millions in Bitcoin
- arcticbull 6y agoI mean how else would ransomware authors demand payment? Classical solutions are too easy to trace. This is one of the worst byproducts of crypto. Turns out permissionless means people you don’t want using the system, using the system for things you don’t want them doing. Who’d have thought.
- sn_master 6y agoMonero. Its designed to be far less tracable than BTC and many exchanges exist online that trade XMR for BTC. I am surprised BTC still has this large presence in the blackmarket.
- arcticbull 6y agoXMR has too little plausible deniability at the onramp and offramp, and is getting delisted from exchanges. Like any money laundering business the process relies on plausible deniability. Think Los Pollos Hermanos. Monero markets itself to criminals. Bitcoin to speculators and ancaps. You can hide your BTC gains by saying you made some leveraged trades in Malta. You can’t hide your Monero gains. Ironically it’s what makes it better at its job that makes it less useful. You really want to toe the line.
- kache_ 6y agoBlockchain analysis makes it extremely difficult to hide bitcoin. Not only that, but bitcoin in general can be blacklisted/tainted.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arcticbull 6y agoHonest question: does that mean anything on a DEX?
- wmf 6y agoIdeally everything coming out of DEXes (and offshore exchanges) should be marked as dirty but that doesn't seem to be happening.
- smabie 6y agopretty easy to launder BTC actually using tornado
- vmception 6y agoYou feel that way, but its not a complete reality. For more than half a decade many bitcoin invoices have actually been paid with Monero and we don't have a way to quantify that except to participate in forums where people talk about what they do. The merchants wouldn't even know if thats what happened. For every XMR.to that shuts down, another has already risen and is just waiting for marketshare. There are also trusted bridges between blockchains. And people are still working on trustless bridges compatible with Monero, which will really unlock its value and make exchanges completely ignorable. Ultimately the state will never accomplish its goal of strongarming the intermediary.
- arcticbull 6y ago> Ultimately the state will never accomplish its goal of strongarming the intermediary. Wow it’s like reading 1984. The uh, first part of course, not the end. If you haven’t read it I don’t want to ruin the surprise.
- vmception 6y agoA non-sequitur. Monero is compliant with all FATF goals. The state has gotten used to surveillance of digital transactions over the past 50 years by deputizing financial institutions, this was a temporary convenience for them and now digital transactions don't require financial institutions, which is simply a reversion to a mean with a millenium of precedent. For now they can strongarm the intermediary as they havent even noticed that they’ve just been taking a convenience for granted, but the reality is pretty clear: the state will have to deter whichever activities they dont like by actually investigating and stopping that person as regulating/strongarming the intermediary wont be a tool they have anymore.
- arcticbull 6y agoTrust me the boundary between the shadow market and the real economy (where such systems would be illegal) is where the friction will always be and remain. Trade away, have fun, as soon as you try and convert to real money they’ll come down on you like the sword of Damocles fell. The only reason this isn’t more frictional is because the government has bigger things to worry about. They simply don’t care about you. The second that changes you’ll be trading in the digital equivalent of suitcases full of prepaid gift cards. This isn’t a new game lol, it’s been played to death and one side has a lot more experience than the other.
- capeterson 6y ago> I am surprised BTC still has this large presence in the blackmarket. The people buying goods online are not usually very tech savvy, so you lose a lot of potential customers by requiring a difficult-to-acquire cryptocurrency. Those selling the goods usually know what's up though, so they're still going to be doing the BTC->XMR->BTC->exchange swap in order to hide their identity. edit: You would be surprised how dumb some people are online though. Nowadays folks are a bit wiser, but the original silk road got taken down because they used hotmail, lol.
- Namidairo 6y ago> so they're still going to be doing the BTC->XMR->BTC->exchange swap in order to hide their identity. Wouldn't this just shift the risk to the exchanges who are now holding tracable proceeds of crime? To my knowledge, there is at least some amount of identity verification on the major exchanges, so presumably that they're fronting with stolen identity documents and the exchange is the one "holding the bag" so to speak?
- capeterson 6y agoMmm it's not too hard to get use a decentralized exchange to get cash overnighted for BTC sent to a PO box that was made with a fake name and cash. You can't really spend/deposit that cash easily, but at least it's not crypto anymore. Also, it's pretty much impossible to fraud Coinbase/Gemini/etc. since you need to hook it up to your bank account, right. Ergo, no one is sending BTC (even if it's "clean") to an exchange hooked up to their bank account. If someone is thorough it's highly unlikely that clean BTC will get them imprisoned, but the IRS might take a hefty cut that vendors of course would prefer to circumvent. Many vendors also don't cash out until they're completely clean, if they can afford to.
- 8note 6y agoI'd imagine this is the primary usecase of bitcoin? Existing transactions cover other usecases just fine
- user-the-name 6y agoCryptocurrency is basically the one thing that has allowed ransomware to thrive.
- fasdf1122 6y agolol, miss the boat?
- Grim-444 6y agoI guess I don't really understand what the plan is, since all bitcoin transactions have a permanent record that are publicly viewable by all. You can't hide bitcoin, every transaction they were involved in is recorded. If they ever want to turn the bitcoin back into real currency they need to go through an exchange to convert it, and the gov can just ask the exchange for the info / bank account of the person associated with the bitcoin.
- user-the-name 6y agoYou can tumble bitcoins. You can use decentralised and/or dodgy exchanges to change bitcoin into other cryptocurrencies, and then back after breaking the trail.
- rdsubhas 6y agoAnswer: No jurisdictive boundary. When you transfer to a bank account, it cannot move out of the country's jurisdiction without triggering multiple regulatory touchpoints. It's not easy to cash the money out overseas. But when you transfer bitcoin, it's done once to a virtual ID. The person receiving doesn't need any online account. You can't trace anything here. It's just "sending from wallet id X to wallet id Y". wallet id Y is just a cryptographic key known to the sender and receiver. Yeah so this "virtual ID" is replicated across the network, but who cares. It doesn't point to anyone yet. After this single step, there is no jurisdiction. The hacker can travel and cash it anywhere in the world outside jurisdiction of the host country's law enforcement.
- graeme 6y agoBut in the case of a financial crime targeting us interests the Us claims pretty much universal jurisdiction and they assert strong influence over global banking. So how do the coins evade that since any transfer is traceable on the blockchain?
- bradleyjg 6y agoI’m as anti-Bitcoin as the next guy, but I still don’t see how it enables all these ransomware attacks. If the federal government were serious about pursuing this why not just follow the public, immutable transfer record and indict and sanction everyone associated with any entity along the way? Not being able to do business with any business that does business in the United States is a pretty big deal. Not to mention your executives not being able to travel anywhere with an extradition treaty.
- runeks 6y agoIt will probably end up this way. “All outputs in the Bitcoin transaction with hash <...> are illegal to redeem.” This, however, means that criminals (who don’t care about the law) can still use these segregated Bitcoin to transact between themselves — as long as miners aren’t punished by including the illegal transactions in new blocks.
- bradleyjg 6y agoThat seems like the bare minimum but I expect that at some point a ransomware will hit a high enough profile target that the federal goes through the effort of actually tracking down recipients.
- chrischen 6y agoFor the doubters of bitcoin arguing the lack of utility here it is. Hackers may be illegal but they are still part of the global economy, providing the service of enforcing security compliance.
- seaman1921 6y agoI agree, so are terrorists - more power to them, right!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoIn a way it reinforces that the status quo has some kinks that could be adjusted every now and then. I'm not saying it's good. It's just a feature of humanity.
- chrischen 6y agoThe anti-American terrorists were making money off opium and yes, this was part of the global economy for better or for worse. Just because we ignore illegal things like prostitution, drugs, extortion, and such doesn't mean they do not affect the prices of legal things associated with them. IF Kia pays the ransom, then they are arguably playing a willing part of the economy of Bitcoin.
- Judgmentality 6y agoI've tried multiple times, including contacting the corporate branch of the automaker and talking to multiple dealers, scouring the forums, and everything else in an attempt to disconnect my car from their online services (in theory, depending on the automaker, the hackers can completely brick your car). My car isn't from Kia, but this is not unique to Kia. I eventually personally found the microcontroller and shorted the modem myself, after doing extensive work to figure out how to do it without breaking anything else.
- mullingitover 6y agoI would wager that this is by design - if you stop making payments on your car, they basically have lojack built in that would help them repossess it. That's why they make it nearly impossible to disable.
- xadhominemx 6y agoNo, that is not why. It is something you just made up. Thanks.
- dschuler 6y agoIt’s possible. This was highlighted a few years ago in Canada when someone had their car disabled remotely over a fee dispute. That was a Kia incidentally. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-man-fights-back-after-dealer-remotely-disables-car-over-200-fee-1.4265588 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-man-fights-ba...
- xadhominemx 6y agoThis is done with an aftermarket part, not the embedded modem
- avmich 6y agoWonder how much it would cost to hire an engineer with required skills to solve this issue :) . Seems like demand is here...
- rectang 6y agoInternet anonymity won't last forever. When it proves impossible to prevent escalating economic damage, the pressure to identify culprits and hold them criminally responsible will prove inexorable.
- teclordphrack2 6y agoSo, is that like 1 bitcoin now?
- vmception 6y agoNot an impossible future: The bitcoindollar, negotiated by nation states with hacking syndicates to price all their contracts in bitcoin, forcing nation states to continually purchase bitcoin and is a key demand driver of bitcoin, and vital to diplomacy and hegemonic peace. replace bitcoin with petro. same thing
- userbinator 6y agoAs we noted previously, it means that many Kia owners may be unable to remotely unlock their vehicles or warm them up during an especially nasty winter storm hitting much of the country this week. Cars had remote unlock and start decades ago (if not OEM, then aftermarket systems were and still are widely available), with zero dependence on what appears to be the company's servers. The only advantage I can fathom for being able to unlock and start a car over the Internet instead of only by being within radio range seems more oriented towards attackers and other user-hostile scenarios ("your car has now become a subscription, please pay to unlock it"). Have we gone backwards...?
- 14 6y agoThis is what I was thinking as well. It is frustrating to see and make me feel less sympathetic to Kia’s situation
- joe_the_user 6y agoThe amazing thing is realizing that despite the increasing dangers and actual disasters involved, more and more things are going to be put on the Internet. The equation everywhere is "the cost of the security is always too high because the failure of security is always an unusual situation and something that usually works and is cheaper will win in the marketplace." Have we gone backwards. Yes, expect more of this.
- faeriechangling 6y agoWhat's described in the article is not a security problem. It's an availability problem. I would argue consumers DO care about the availability and I see lots of cloud based systems with local fallbacks. When IKEA introduced cloud devices, IKEA hardly a company known for high prices or using expensive stuff in their products, they had local fallbacks. Their product is competing with the reliability of less expensive devices controlled with a light switch. Locks are another case where if you reinvent the wheel and get significantly less reliability people will be mad.
- 6y ago
- tunnuz 6y agoHonest question, is it a big deal not being able to start your car remotely?
- hanche 6y agoNot for me. (I own a Kia Soul, electric.) Many owners use a similar feature to get their car to warm up at a specific time, though. I haven’t used it myself, though, being too disorganized to know ahead of time when I want to use the car. But I find it very useful to be able to keep an eye on the charging status, so I can return to the car when the battery is full enough. Of course, if the intruders have the means to disable my car remotely, that is a much more serious issue.
- crocodiletears 6y agoNot really, for most functional adults. But it's offensive you need the OEM's servers to do it.
- chrisseaton 6y agoNo. People in this thread are (deliberately?) misunderstanding and (pretending to?) think it means being able to start them at all.
- kube-system 6y agoIt would be for me if I recently spent $40,000 for the privilege of doing so.
- tyingq 6y agoI think all the noise from people complaining about it is the bigger deal. That results eventually in the general public learning that Kia has lost control to hackers, which eventually hurts car sales.
- yread 6y agoPerhaps the original article on bleeping computer would be better? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/kia-motors-america-suffers-ransomware-attack-20-million-ransom/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/kia-motors-am...
- mensetmanusman 6y agoLooks like BTCs main value is facilitating ransom ware attacks
- smabie 6y agoNot exactly. Tens of billions of dollars worth of BTC changes hands everyday and percentage of transactions associated with ransomware is absolutely minuscule.
- gokhan 6y agoBut what's the value in it? I'm trading Bitcoin and related ecosystem (from ETH or DEFI nowadays to crypto related securities like MARA, RIOT, CAN, etc. I always hold some crypto) since 2012 and made very good returns compared to the initial investment. But never ever saw a widely adopted use case for any coin other than speculation. There are always promises, wishful-thinking, hypothetical demand for a use case but it never materializes. Here are some: BTC: Trade (edit: for goods and services)? No use since price is too volatile. Store of value? Tell me again after this bull run. Besides, what's different than LTC, or even Doge that defines a different value proposition? DEFI: The infrastructure is there but people just use it to speculate. Never heard a real business borrowing in DEFI to finance, for example, shop renovation. The only use case I can come up with is miners borrowing to buy miner hardware, since returns will be in crypto and will be implicitly hedged against crypto price inflation. Other than that, trading SUSHI or UNI or whatsnext is the only way. NFT: What happened to CryptoKitties between last bull run and this one? NFT actually guarantees the uniqueness of the outer shell, not what's inside. Rare gaming items might be a use case, but why a game maker would use something it can't control, or fully extract value is beyond me.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoRight, just like physical cash.
- quantumhobbit 6y agoDon’t forget the drugs and money laundering.
- mbreese 6y agoSo, let’s assume the perpetrators get their ransom in Bitcoin... how are they ever going to be able to spend these coins? It’s not like the transactions are anonymous. So what will the rest of the world be able to do about it? Can the target wallets be blocked? Monitored?
- vmception 6y agothe secret that chainanalysis companies wont tell you is that they have no idea if the same physical human still owns the coins they are following. watching transactions on a blockchain is a wild goose chase that relies on amateurs making stupid mistakes.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoHuh? Aren't we following addresses (If you have the private key to an account that accepted a ransom, chances are you are the same person (or in cahoots enough to be legally in trouble)
- netsharc 6y agoI don't know the details of the tracing, but let's say I control the wallet that is to receive the ransom. Wouldn't it be "trivial" for me to sell some to e.g. a Chinese millionaire, who in turn would transfer me some money from his Cyprus bank account to mine? Or replace "Chinese" with any country where there's less "Know your customer" requirements. It's probably not even that hard for a Chinese millionaire to pay one of his housekeepers a lot of Yuans to borrow her identity card to open that account...
- tshaddox 6y agoSure, if you want to trust another party to clean the money, then of course you can conceal the trail of custody from the blockchain.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
- torbital 6y agoWas Kia using BlackBerry's QNX platform?
- xyst 6y agoIt looks like they are per BB news release: https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2020/blackberry-qnx-software-now-embedded-in-more-than-175-million-vehicles https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-rele... But I think the ransomware attack is more on the Kia internal servers rather than on the cars themselves. The inability for people to unlock their cars remotely seems to be a side effect rather than a main target of the hacker group.
- jonplackett 6y agoHave there been any attempts to deal with this kind of thing within Bitcoin? Like, could everyone agree to blacklist specific coins that were known to have been paid as random? Would it be plausible for a large government to introduce regulation to demand any proper exchange to refuse coins originating from a ransom? Or is that just impossible?
- treeman79 6y agoIsn’t avoiding regulations one of the main points of Bitcoin?
- avdlinde 6y agoMaybe, but that doesn't make the question invalid. If a majority decides a subset of coins is invalid or should not be used, wouldn't that work?
- jonplackett 6y agoIt doesn't stop a government trying. If an exchange is in their jurisdiction then what choice do they have? It would depend how many governments would enforce it - so probably goes back to the political will question in some comments above.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoThis is probably easier than "normal" money laundering due to the traceability of BTC. But it flounders on the usual problems of money laundering (for example the biggest money laundering locations globally are London and NYC.) We can solve money laundering but it needs political will - write your congressman!
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> We can solve money laundering but it needs political will - write your congressman! Is this one of those things that's completely trivial as long as you're willing to completely throw privacy out the window and make life more difficult for completely legitimate transactions, or is it really "just" political will?
- fasteddie31003 6y agoI own a 03 Ram 2500 with a 5.9 Cummins engine. It has 250,000 miles and from the forums it can easy get to 1 million miles. There is no infotainment system to show the truck's age, distract you, or break from a bad solider joint. I've fixed everything myself on that truck from the transmission to the axle seals. The vehicle is actually increasing in value because it has a grand fathered in diesel engine. I have no idea why someone would buy a car with so many confusers (AVE for computer) that will only give you grief down the road (literally).
- jgilias 6y agoThere's a lot of symmetry with farmers buying 40 year old tractors. For exactly the same reasons. I really hope the pendulum swings the other way if even just a bit. I mean, there are still new dumb-phones being made. So maybe there's hope for dumb-other-things as well.
- tsomctl 6y agoHate to break it to you, but a zener diode on your ECM can fail short, which burns up the pcb trace for the power. And the ECM is glued together, and it's ridiculously hard to open up without damaging it further, and it has a flexible pcb that can split if you flex it too much once you get it open. (I have one sitting 5 feet from me).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kobalsky 6y agoLiking one specific generation of technology is just being a modern amish. I'm pretty your old truck is an abomination for some old timer. New tech will be tested and bad ideas will be eventually abandoned down the road, this is how it works.
- jacquesm 6y agoRemote unlock is the least of the problems here, the real issue is that cars have no business being connected to the vendors servers at all. This could have been entirely solved locally by pairing the car to one or more phones using BT/WiFi. How remote does it have to be, you don't really want to be able to start your car if you're not in WiFi range.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> Remote unlock is the least of the problems here, the real issue is that cars have no business being connected to the vendors servers at all. Why do you think that? It provides valuable functionality that I use, such as journey logging, fuel status, access from an app, and so on. You need an intermediate server run by the vendor. I can't give it my phone's IP address, can I!
- cwalv 6y agoMaybe something simpler like a stun/turn server would be enough. Or something with no infrastructure (or recurring fees) at all, only working in my local network (like my printer).
- chrisseaton 6y agoI can understand that's attractive to a techie, but approximately nobody else wants to manage that kind of setup.
- avianlyric 6y agoWhat is there to manage? Plenty of devices work just fine on local networks without the need of a mothership to act as a bridge. Just look at almost any Apple P2P service, such as AirDrop, Wifi Password sharing, Handoff, AirPlay etc Zero management need by the customer.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
- Jimmc414 6y agoI really hate the fact that it would have been so much cheaper for them to have just quietly paid the $20 million from the outset.
- Jerry2 6y agoAccording to the original article [1] (The Drive one is just a poor rewrite), Hyundai is also affected. >After the publishing of this story, numerous Hyundai and dealership employees contacted BleepingComputer to state that Hyundai was also affected by unexplained outages. >In emails sent by Hyundai Motors America to Kia dealerships on Saturday and seen by BleepingComputer, Hyundai stated that multiple systems were down including their internal dealer site, hyundaidealer.com. [1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/kia-motors-america-suffers-ransomware-attack-20-million-ransom/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/kia-motors-am...
- Clewza313 6y agoNot surprising, since Hyundai acquired a majority stake in Kia in 1998.
- cblconfederate 6y agoIt's only fitting, bitcoin is decentralized, it wants to kill centralized security/locks
- codegeek 6y agoCars are really going in the wrong direction overall. I do like a car with some tech like power windows, memory seats etc but I do not want to connect it to the internet. I have my smartphone for it already. I want my car to be dumb. Add Key, it works. No key, you are locked out and you can call someone to unlock it for you. Btw, not to mention that New Cars are becoming too expensive compared to say 15-20 years ago due to all this "tech" while the engines are becoming crappy with plastic (shout out to famous youtuber Scotty Kilmer if anyone knows him :))
- marshmallow_12 6y agoi'm not sure how much the tech adds to the price of the car. More likely the price increase is due to much stricter crash safety standards then existed 20 years ago. If crappy plastic makes an engine more reliable, economical, powerful and cheaper, then most people are willing to give up on some durability.
- dazc 6y agoThe original buyer is covered by the warranty so doesn't care about the plastic parts that will, likely, not wear out in the first couple of years anyhow. The next sucker down the line though is in for some severe finacial pain.
- wil421 6y agoI don’t buy it. People were saying the same thing 15+ years ago and I’ve owned several cars from the 2000s, 2 of them for over a decade. 2 Toyotas and a BMW, all had water pumps and bearings wear out. The water pump has plastic but the plastic’s life is longer than the bearings in the pump. Water pumps, wheel or u-joint bearings, and emission sensors were the only issues.
- alfor 6y agoBad news for Bitcoin and other crypto If crypto become the payment system for criminals I wonder what will happen with crypto.
- SXX 6y agoCrypto would be spectacularly popular then. But majority of criminals totally okay with cash and normal money laundering using temporary companies and banks.
- MattGaiser 6y agoIs this a big part of why companies are buying up tons of bitcoin? Insurance against these kinds of attacks?
- ramshorst 6y agoMakes me think of Mr. Robot season 1...
- Animats 6y agoNext, some attacker figures out how to modify a firmware update to the fleet and stops all the cars until the ransom is paid.
- mabbo 6y agoIf they were able to do that, I suspect the random would have been much higher.
- userbinator 6y agoOnly stop? Make them behave erratically and dangerously... I'm sure a few "out of control" cars causing mayhem would attract sufficient attention. The question then is whether it'd make the manufacturers reconsider their "always connected" stance, or just cause them to lock down things in a user-hostile fashion even harder. Now you know one of the answers to the question of why am I scared of self-driving cars...
- tyingq 6y agoIt does sounds like they are deep enough in to stop things like replacement car keys, programming replacement body control modules, ECUs, etc. Not as dramatic, but Kia/Hyundai can't hold out long as-is.
- irrational 6y agoOne of the reasons I chose Home Assistant instead of SmartThings, despite costing more for the initial setup and taking more work to get going, is that SmartThings has to call home to Samsung servers and there are lots of stories of problems people have had when the Samsung servers are down.
- toinetoine 6y agoHome Assistant really is amazing. It has integrations [1] for anything you'd want and works on tons of devices. Hosting it locally on an old raspberry pi 3, has been controlling thermostat, lights, and (as of 2 weeks ago) sprinklers. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/
- herval 6y agoLiquidity question. If you send a crook a bunch of btc, and they eventually use that btc, isn’t it pretty easy to trace the transactions all the way? How do these people get to liquidate or use these ransom payments without leaving a long papertrail of everything they did with the money?
- lftl 6y agoI think they'd usually use one of the non-KYC exchanges to move the money into an anonymous cryptocurrency, and then out to whatever they wanted. I'm not sure why they don't skip the intermediate step and just ask for Monero or whatever. Maybe they think the mark will be more familiar with BTC and thus more likely to deliver?
- sedatk 6y agoThey use money mules. Hundreds or thousands of regular people who have access to a Bitcoin ATMs with the promise of a small comission. They hire them in forums. They hand over to other proxies and you lose the trace at that point. At least, most of it.
- FDSGSG 6y agoNonsense, nobody does this after they already have bitcoin. Such mules are used when you want to receive and cash out illicit bank transfers into bitcoin.
- throwawayboise 6y agoHow can companies not have ransomware in their threat models, with a tested recovery plan and tested offsite backups? Too many big corps have been victimized to think that it can't happen to anyone. You must assume it will happen, and when it does you must have a plan to recover.
- TacticalCoder 6y agoIt would be hilarious if, as a consequence of cryptocurrencies (sadly in this case because of a very nefarious use), companies started taking security more seriously. Somehow I hope that when, say, Toyota sees this someone somewhere pushes for better recovery plan / offline backups, etc.
- ht85 6y agoOffsite backup is not enough. I have done consulting on many projects and on every one of them, someone getting access to certain servers would be able to sabotage backups as well. If your data is important, you should replicate your backups to an append-only storage with a long retention period. I've been using S3 in "Compliance" retention mode, which coupled with Glacier is cheap, and more importantly lets me sleep at night.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoYou can also do just fine with an LTO tape drive. The main problem is that people want automated convenience and automated convenience can be hacked before people notice. An LTO backup tape on a shelf might as well be stored in Fort Knox as far as a hacker is concerned.
- biolurker1 6y agoThey are idiots, they should be asking for monero how can they be so clueless?
- qwerty456127 6y agoI would never in my sane mind buy a car which relies on an Internet connection for anything beyond updating maps or loading music.
- js4ever 6y agoIs it still through Eternal Blue or is it a new hack?
- protomyth 6y agoOk, I am a bit confused. Which model Kias connect over the internet? I have a 2017 Kia Niro, and you have to manually run an app to update information if you are so inclined. Also, I can pay my bill at kmfusa.com right now, so what does the article mean about not being able to pay on the loan?
- yread 6y agoThe UVO is only on newer models (depends on the region but it seems 2019+). European 2018 Niro here also without UVO
- protomyth 6y agoThanks. One part of the article is false, the payments at kmfusa.com are going through. I will say the standard two e-mails they send aren't being sent. They sent the "Kia Motors Finance Payment Authorization" from speedpay.com, but have not sent the "Thank You - Your Payment Has Been Processed" email from KMFUSA@servicing.kmfusa.com.cname.campaign.adobe.com yet. Odd. Money was taken out of my checking account.
- spoonjim 6y agoCan someone with knowledge about Bitcoin explain how the hackers will eventually use this Bitcoin given that it can be traced back to them?
- kube-system 6y agoThe same way criminals use cash: they launder it.
- tomcooks 6y agoOn an unrelated note: What a spamfest of a banner ridden website