4 ms·

Actually, I think there's a legal case for not having root on a car. It could mean you can disable safety measures - especially with regards to the battery, i.e

by relix 14y ago

Actually, I think there's a legal case for not having root on a car. It could mean you can disable safety measures - especially with regards to the battery, i.e. overcharging, temperature, ... - that might endanger you or others on the road. Edit: downvoted for stating a valid point in a neutral tone? Stay classy HN...

jotux 14y ago
>It could mean you can disable safety measures How is this any different from being able to open the hood on a conventional car? Or having a screw driver and socket wrench that fit the nuts/bots/screws on a conventional car?
- lawnchair_larry 14y ago
  It's funny what kind of hand wavy fearmongering rhetoric people engage in when computers are involved. Hackers are this generation's witches, and that's why we keep locking them up for trivial and harmless manipulations.
- relix 14y ago
  It's not, but I'm pretty sure it's also illegal to disable your brakes and then drive your car on a public road.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    And thus, when it comes to software modification, the only reasonable course of action is make the equivalent of opening the hood illegal?
  - jotux 14y ago
    And yet the right to disassemble and replace the brakes on my car is socially and legally accepted. Why is it suddenly "scary" to modify the software?
- ryana 14y ago
  It's not any different from being able to do that to hardware. That's why cars have to meet certain standards in order to be legal for driving on public roads. It seems likely to me that making certain changes to a Tesla through rooting would just mean the car would end up not being street legal.
revelation 14y ago
I guess thats overly dramatic. The big touchscreen (and I guess the only thing that actually runs a Linux) is called an infotainment system for a reason - it's absolutely non-critical to the operation of the vehicle. In fact, theres a hotkey on the steering wheel controls to reboot it :) All the critical systems are controlled by embedded systems running either no operating system at all or realtime operating systems that have been formally verified to some degree.
- mschuster91 14y ago
  But they're all wired together with CANBus and similar interconnections. I don't exactly remember the details, but some researchers were able to kill acceleration with a MP3 on a CD rom, which exploited a buffer overflow and then sent malicious commands on the CANbus.
  - zwp 14y ago
    "Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces", Checkoway et al. http://www.autosec.org/publications.html http://www.autosec.org/publications.html From the FAQ: "We explore a number of other communications channels in our August 2011 paper "Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces", including long- and short-range wireless communications, the networked diagnostic tools used by automobile mechanics and the car's CD player."
i_cannot_hack 14y ago
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by relix 14y ago

jotux 14y ago

>It could mean you can disable safety measures How is this any different from being able to open the hood on a conventional car? Or having a screw driver and socket wrench that fit the nuts/bots/screws on a conventional car?

lawnchair_larry 14y ago
It's funny what kind of hand wavy fearmongering rhetoric people engage in when computers are involved. Hackers are this generation's witches, and that's why we keep locking them up for trivial and harmless manipulations.
relix 14y ago
It's not, but I'm pretty sure it's also illegal to disable your brakes and then drive your car on a public road.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  And thus, when it comes to software modification, the only reasonable course of action is make the equivalent of opening the hood illegal?
- jotux 14y ago
  And yet the right to disassemble and replace the brakes on my car is socially and legally accepted. Why is it suddenly "scary" to modify the software?
ryana 14y ago
It's not any different from being able to do that to hardware. That's why cars have to meet certain standards in order to be legal for driving on public roads. It seems likely to me that making certain changes to a Tesla through rooting would just mean the car would end up not being street legal.

revelation 14y ago

I guess thats overly dramatic. The big touchscreen (and I guess the only thing that actually runs a Linux) is called an infotainment system for a reason - it's absolutely non-critical to the operation of the vehicle. In fact, theres a hotkey on the steering wheel controls to reboot it :) All the critical systems are controlled by embedded systems running either no operating system at all or realtime operating systems that have been formally verified to some degree.

mschuster91 14y ago
But they're all wired together with CANBus and similar interconnections. I don't exactly remember the details, but some researchers were able to kill acceleration with a MP3 on a CD rom, which exploited a buffer overflow and then sent malicious commands on the CANbus.
- zwp 14y ago
  "Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces", Checkoway et al. http://www.autosec.org/publications.html http://www.autosec.org/publications.html From the FAQ: "We explore a number of other communications channels in our August 2011 paper "Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces", including long- and short-range wireless communications, the networked diagnostic tools used by automobile mechanics and the car's CD player."

i_cannot_hack 14y ago

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html