5 ms·

What if I told you most any vehicle can block almost any intersection.

• gruez 2y ago
  Yeah, all you need is a rented uhaul that "conveniently" broke down when you're in the intersection.
  • kjkjadksj 2y ago
    The ole methlyamine train heist play
• dang 2y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • 38 2y ago
    Title is editorialized, pointlessly so.
    • dang 2y ago
      I don't know whether you meant the submitted title ("A malicious vehicle can block "smart" intersections in the USA") or the current title ("One malicious car could trick smart traffic control systems in the US"), which was my attempt at shortening the article's own title* to fit HN's 80 char limit. In any case the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40359800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40359800) broke the site guidelines either way; we're trying to avoid shallow internet dismissals here. They're not only uninteresting in themselves, they influence threads to become less interesting. * in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• genocidicbunny 2y ago
  That requires physical presence whereas these sorts of attacks can be undertaken remotely. And to actually use that as an attack, as the article points out, you need to do it to a lot of intersections which is hard to scale when you need to actually be physically present. Plus, what happens if there are flaws in the control system that you can exploit via those kind of attack via a car. Like turning all the lights green at the same time.
  • jameshart 2y ago
    This is just rampant speculation. The attack shown here requires a transmitting device to be physically present at the intersection, and the impact it was able to have on the system was “to increase the total delay by as high as 68.1%” This isn’t a vector for a mass hack of traffic lights with enormous safety consequences like in the Italian Job. It’s just a mechanism by which a malicious user can degrade public infrastructure. There are lots of ways in which malicious users can degrade public infrastructure. Usually though people don’t. When people do we have laws to prosecute them with.
    • ElevenLathe 2y ago
      This is a little trickier because if you just park your car in the middle of an intersection, it's obvious who is the problem (it's you, or at least the car even if it can't be traced back to you). If the problem can be anybody with a few dollars' worth of electronics within 100ft of an intersection, then it isn't so obvious. Now we need FCC party vans, or at least the cops need another doohickey now.
      • jameshart 2y ago
        Right. And you think people will plant electronic doohickeys at junctions in order to make them 60% less efficient? The kind of ne’erdowells who get their kicks by getting away with recklessly causing mild inconveniences to other people? What else might they do if left unchecked? Hog all the WiFi bandwidth at the library? Put some plastic into the cardboard recycling bin?
• ceejayoz 2y ago
  A computer worm is pretty unlikely to make that suddenly a nation-wide thing.