6 ms·

Automotive software should be mandated to be open-source.

by hoseja 3y ago

sauercrowd 3y ago
? Why?
- INTPenis 3y ago
  I'm not the person you replied to but I agree, because it's related to public safety. Same with aviation software. Anything that deals with public safety should be audited by the public.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    Maybe we could start with this much less general principle: Whenever the output of software is offered as evidence against you in court, you should be entitled to the source code of the software.
    - calgoo 3y ago
      The post office workers in the UK who where f-ed over by the government because the software was reporting things incorrectly could really have used this as well. Should all our financial systems be open source too? Maybe it should be like Copyright or patents, you can keep things private for a while for an advantage, but then you would need to release all code as open source / public domain or similar? It should also be available before that to be reviewed by professionals following a formal process of some sort.
      - adh636 3y ago
        > Should all our financial systems be open source too? Yes.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      That's really a good thing you are on to there.
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        More downvotes than upvotes. :/
        jacquesm 3y ago
        HN doesn't like calls to take responsibility for what we produce. Regulation and responsibility are anathema here. But no worries, the world is fortunately a lot larger than that and little by little the tide seems to be turning towards holding the producers of software accountable for the works they produce, just like every other engineering discipline. I can't wait.
  - mratsim 3y ago
    It should be audited by professionals, but available for public reviews / additional audits. General folks and even most devs do not have the skills to audit code.
    - INTPenis 3y ago
      Nothing prevents the owner of the code to audit it themselves, but everyone else should also be able to. I think if you release code related to important everyday things like cars, everyone who is able will want to take a look. And you never know who will think outside the box and stumble across something they can then escalate and investigate with other people who are more capable. It happens in open source all the time.
      - mratsim 3y ago
        Auditing your own code doesn't help if you have a blindspot. You will miss it while developing and auditing. > Everyone who is able will want to take a look. This is not true. Auditing is very skill intensive and time intensive. There needs to be compensation for it either direct (you pay for professional auditors) or indirect (you're an academic and you get reputation and grants for breaking WPA3, SGX, Mega or SIKE, or fame for breaking the PS3). You can easily get in a situation with "The Emperor has no clothes" where everyone thought open-source code must have been audited by someone because it's open, when in fact no one did because they didn't care or had no incentives.
    - realusername 3y ago
      We live now in a world where the most qualified people are explicitly not part of the old definition of "qualified professionals"
      - mratsim 3y ago
        What do you mean?
        realusername 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
theK 3y ago
I've thought about this a couple of times. In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car, including the logic that controls its servos, hydraulics, propulsion, etc. So the whole OS and controler firmware should be open source, right? It would be awesome but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to. Are all self propelled four whelers cars? What about three wheelers? And why make a distinction on wheels? And if propulsion is the driver then I can see dealers suddenly selling you (proprietary) carriages and an added service of mountig an engine on them. Soon enough you come to the point where absolutely everything needs to be open source. And while I would be happy to be part of that world, I don't really see a tangible way towards it. It just seems there is too much vested interest in defending the right for proprietary software. The one avenue where there might be a sliver of hope for such an idea is maybe commercial aviation. That field is already overly regulated so it might be doable. There still will be a huge loophole in terms of military vehicles but it still seems vastly more rwalistic than forcing all car companies to opensource everything.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  Vehicle categories already exist in all countries, for the purposes of registration, taxation, safety, etc.
- eesmith 3y ago
  > In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car I really don't think the standard "safely ~hack~investigate~" is reasonable, for both practical and policy reasons. By focusing on an imaginary perfect world, you take focus away from the real word, where we know people do unsafe hacks to their car already, even without touching software, like https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-built-civic-exocar/ https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-buil... . There is no way to prevent those unsafe hacks that wouldn't also prevent huge numbers of safe hacks which people accept and support as reasonable, and place a huge and undue amount of control into the auto manufacturer. In the old days of Ma Bell, AT&T tried to prevent Hush-A-Phone from selling a mouthpiece cover designed to make it harder for others to overhear your conversation. AT&T argued that a foreign attachment like that could damage the phone network. A decade later AT&T sued Carterfone for selling an acoustic coupler to a radio, using the same justification of possible damage. AT&T lost both cases, and the latter case is why early personal computer modems were acoustically, not electrically, coupled. We should not extend that same power to auto manufacturers. > but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to Which is why this sort of legislation is done in steps. Focus on where it makes the most sense, get experience on how useful it is and what the negative consequences are, and use that experience to judge if anything else should be included. That's why the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to_Repair_Act) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to... focuses only on motor vehicles, and not the right to repair all machinery and devices.
jesterson 3y ago
Absolutely not. Saying this as a huge proponent of open source. If it’s the case, each clown garage shop would be able to modify key characteristics of any car. And oh boy they will do it. Would you fly on aircraft knowing mechanic servicing it last night could have added something funny to the plane you are taking?
- reedciccio 3y ago
  There is a difference between being able to inspect study and modify software for a car and installing modified versions on your or someone else's car. We already have regulations covering radio emissions, this could be the same: modify all you want but you can't install a modified version unless you validate the modifications with a certification authority. Btw, the cyber resilience act in EU will cover these cases.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Being closed source doesn’t strike me as an effective mitigation tactic. You can already buy aftermarket ECUs and such, and it’s pretty unlikely the garage would install anything that would invade your privacy more than what the manufacturers have installed. If they were going to do it as a prank or shortcut or misguided enhancement, they can do exactly the same thing with physical parts. I guess I just don’t see the threat vector here. The big benefit seems to be auto manufacturers being able to rely on security through obscurity, which has already failed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963
- hoseja 3y ago
  You give the mechanic an opportunity to cut your brakelines too and they don't do it. It's part of the appliance, it should be accessible. Maybe I was imprecise with open-source, I meant more source-available.
- jamesrr39 3y ago
  > If it’s the case, each clown garage shop would be able to modify key characteristics of any car. And oh boy they will do it. Car workshops would modify and compile their own distribution of the car source code? I can't say I have ever been to a workshop where I would imagine anything like that. Open source here would clearly be a big win for security and bug identifications in cars. Better quality laws to go along with it to protect researchers would naturally be a big positive as well. For a comparison look to Android. AOSP is open source, and whilst alternative, non-OEM, flavours of Android do exist (GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc). But you don't see shops that fix or sell phones putting any of these on the phone. And if you did, would it be a security downgrade? I don't think so! > Would you fly on aircraft knowing mechanic servicing it last night could have added something funny to the plane you are taking? But... they could have done. Maybe not the software, but mechanically, of course it's possible. Why doesn't it happen though? I guess the same reasons why in general people act responsibly in society.
newsclues 3y ago
I would like to start with forcing them to allow it as a low/no cost option, at least for some models. Imagine people had the option when buying a car, truck or minivan of having it be open and tinkerable? Most people won't care, but some hobbyists will. Some companies will love it, some startups might be founded for it. But eventually there will be a killer app, or huge benefit, and it will become more common until it is standard. I'd imagine certain groups like farmers would jump on buying open source trucks, hoping they can get them to last longer, or repair them cheaper.
- jijijijij 3y ago
  I am not sure it's manageable for a society, when random people start messing with code controlling breaks and stuff. You'd think that's neatly separated into a single purpose IC, but I fear it isn't. Gonna be a nightmare for insurances and courts.
  - newsclues 3y ago
    There is no software locks to prevent modification to existing mechanical cars that can and are modified to be dangerous and there is inspection processes etc and laws to deal with it. It’s even easier to scan for modified software than look inside an engine. There are places for safe experimentation like tracks, so I don’t see why this fear isn’t irrational or a ploy for control.
    - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
      > Imagine people had the option when buying a car, truck or minivan of having it be open and tinkerable? [...] > There are places for safe experimentation like tracks, so I don’t see why this fear isn’t irrational or a ploy for control. I don't think many people track modded minivans. "No the Subaru WRX is my DD, my main track car is a Honda Odyssey"
    - adrianN 3y ago
      It’s extremely hard to figure out whether modified software poses a security risk. I wouldn’t trust experts spending long hours to get it right, I certainly wouldn’t trust people at TÜV doing spotchecks to find the bugs.

Automotive software should be mandated to be open-source.

by hoseja 3y ago

Automotive software should be mandated to be open-source.

sauercrowd 3y ago

? Why?

INTPenis 3y ago
I'm not the person you replied to but I agree, because it's related to public safety. Same with aviation software. Anything that deals with public safety should be audited by the public.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  Maybe we could start with this much less general principle: Whenever the output of software is offered as evidence against you in court, you should be entitled to the source code of the software.
  - calgoo 3y ago
    The post office workers in the UK who where f-ed over by the government because the software was reporting things incorrectly could really have used this as well. Should all our financial systems be open source too? Maybe it should be like Copyright or patents, you can keep things private for a while for an advantage, but then you would need to release all code as open source / public domain or similar? It should also be available before that to be reviewed by professionals following a formal process of some sort.
    - adh636 3y ago
      > Should all our financial systems be open source too? Yes.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That's really a good thing you are on to there.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      More downvotes than upvotes. :/
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        HN doesn't like calls to take responsibility for what we produce. Regulation and responsibility are anathema here. But no worries, the world is fortunately a lot larger than that and little by little the tide seems to be turning towards holding the producers of software accountable for the works they produce, just like every other engineering discipline. I can't wait.
- mratsim 3y ago
  It should be audited by professionals, but available for public reviews / additional audits. General folks and even most devs do not have the skills to audit code.
  - INTPenis 3y ago
    Nothing prevents the owner of the code to audit it themselves, but everyone else should also be able to. I think if you release code related to important everyday things like cars, everyone who is able will want to take a look. And you never know who will think outside the box and stumble across something they can then escalate and investigate with other people who are more capable. It happens in open source all the time.
    - mratsim 3y ago
      Auditing your own code doesn't help if you have a blindspot. You will miss it while developing and auditing. > Everyone who is able will want to take a look. This is not true. Auditing is very skill intensive and time intensive. There needs to be compensation for it either direct (you pay for professional auditors) or indirect (you're an academic and you get reputation and grants for breaking WPA3, SGX, Mega or SIKE, or fame for breaking the PS3). You can easily get in a situation with "The Emperor has no clothes" where everyone thought open-source code must have been audited by someone because it's open, when in fact no one did because they didn't care or had no incentives.
  - realusername 3y ago
    We live now in a world where the most qualified people are explicitly not part of the old definition of "qualified professionals"
    - mratsim 3y ago
      What do you mean?
      - realusername 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

theK 3y ago

I've thought about this a couple of times. In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car, including the logic that controls its servos, hydraulics, propulsion, etc. So the whole OS and controler firmware should be open source, right? It would be awesome but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to. Are all self propelled four whelers cars? What about three wheelers? And why make a distinction on wheels? And if propulsion is the driver then I can see dealers suddenly selling you (proprietary) carriages and an added service of mountig an engine on them. Soon enough you come to the point where absolutely everything needs to be open source. And while I would be happy to be part of that world, I don't really see a tangible way towards it. It just seems there is too much vested interest in defending the right for proprietary software. The one avenue where there might be a sliver of hope for such an idea is maybe commercial aviation. That field is already overly regulated so it might be doable. There still will be a huge loophole in terms of military vehicles but it still seems vastly more rwalistic than forcing all car companies to opensource everything.

dontlaugh 3y ago
Vehicle categories already exist in all countries, for the purposes of registration, taxation, safety, etc.
eesmith 3y ago
> In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car I really don't think the standard "safely ~hack~investigate~" is reasonable, for both practical and policy reasons. By focusing on an imaginary perfect world, you take focus away from the real word, where we know people do unsafe hacks to their car already, even without touching software, like https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-built-civic-exocar/ https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-buil... . There is no way to prevent those unsafe hacks that wouldn't also prevent huge numbers of safe hacks which people accept and support as reasonable, and place a huge and undue amount of control into the auto manufacturer. In the old days of Ma Bell, AT&T tried to prevent Hush-A-Phone from selling a mouthpiece cover designed to make it harder for others to overhear your conversation. AT&T argued that a foreign attachment like that could damage the phone network. A decade later AT&T sued Carterfone for selling an acoustic coupler to a radio, using the same justification of possible damage. AT&T lost both cases, and the latter case is why early personal computer modems were acoustically, not electrically, coupled. We should not extend that same power to auto manufacturers. > but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to Which is why this sort of legislation is done in steps. Focus on where it makes the most sense, get experience on how useful it is and what the negative consequences are, and use that experience to judge if anything else should be included. That's why the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to_Repair_Act) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to... focuses only on motor vehicles, and not the right to repair all machinery and devices.

jesterson 3y ago

Absolutely not. Saying this as a huge proponent of open source. If it’s the case, each clown garage shop would be able to modify key characteristics of any car. And oh boy they will do it. Would you fly on aircraft knowing mechanic servicing it last night could have added something funny to the plane you are taking?

reedciccio 3y ago
There is a difference between being able to inspect study and modify software for a car and installing modified versions on your or someone else's car. We already have regulations covering radio emissions, this could be the same: modify all you want but you can't install a modified version unless you validate the modifications with a certification authority. Btw, the cyber resilience act in EU will cover these cases.
chefandy 3y ago
Being closed source doesn’t strike me as an effective mitigation tactic. You can already buy aftermarket ECUs and such, and it’s pretty unlikely the garage would install anything that would invade your privacy more than what the manufacturers have installed. If they were going to do it as a prank or shortcut or misguided enhancement, they can do exactly the same thing with physical parts. I guess I just don’t see the threat vector here. The big benefit seems to be auto manufacturers being able to rely on security through obscurity, which has already failed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963
hoseja 3y ago
You give the mechanic an opportunity to cut your brakelines too and they don't do it. It's part of the appliance, it should be accessible. Maybe I was imprecise with open-source, I meant more source-available.
jamesrr39 3y ago
> If it’s the case, each clown garage shop would be able to modify key characteristics of any car. And oh boy they will do it. Car workshops would modify and compile their own distribution of the car source code? I can't say I have ever been to a workshop where I would imagine anything like that. Open source here would clearly be a big win for security and bug identifications in cars. Better quality laws to go along with it to protect researchers would naturally be a big positive as well. For a comparison look to Android. AOSP is open source, and whilst alternative, non-OEM, flavours of Android do exist (GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc). But you don't see shops that fix or sell phones putting any of these on the phone. And if you did, would it be a security downgrade? I don't think so! > Would you fly on aircraft knowing mechanic servicing it last night could have added something funny to the plane you are taking? But... they could have done. Maybe not the software, but mechanically, of course it's possible. Why doesn't it happen though? I guess the same reasons why in general people act responsibly in society.

newsclues 3y ago

I would like to start with forcing them to allow it as a low/no cost option, at least for some models. Imagine people had the option when buying a car, truck or minivan of having it be open and tinkerable? Most people won't care, but some hobbyists will. Some companies will love it, some startups might be founded for it. But eventually there will be a killer app, or huge benefit, and it will become more common until it is standard. I'd imagine certain groups like farmers would jump on buying open source trucks, hoping they can get them to last longer, or repair them cheaper.

jijijijij 3y ago
I am not sure it's manageable for a society, when random people start messing with code controlling breaks and stuff. You'd think that's neatly separated into a single purpose IC, but I fear it isn't. Gonna be a nightmare for insurances and courts.
- newsclues 3y ago
  There is no software locks to prevent modification to existing mechanical cars that can and are modified to be dangerous and there is inspection processes etc and laws to deal with it. It’s even easier to scan for modified software than look inside an engine. There are places for safe experimentation like tracks, so I don’t see why this fear isn’t irrational or a ploy for control.
  - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
    > Imagine people had the option when buying a car, truck or minivan of having it be open and tinkerable? [...] > There are places for safe experimentation like tracks, so I don’t see why this fear isn’t irrational or a ploy for control. I don't think many people track modded minivans. "No the Subaru WRX is my DD, my main track car is a Honda Odyssey"
  - adrianN 3y ago
    It’s extremely hard to figure out whether modified software poses a security risk. I wouldn’t trust experts spending long hours to get it right, I certainly wouldn’t trust people at TÜV doing spotchecks to find the bugs.