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The probability of a journalist investigating a big story in the atmosphere of recent scandals is significant. The probability of having a car crash, even a wei

by pyalot2 13y ago

The probability of a journalist investigating a big story in the atmosphere of recent scandals is significant. The probability of having a car crash, even a weird one is also quite significant. I won't comment on the (alleged) history of DUI offenses of hastings. But if you really want to go off the conspiracy deep end, here's my take: Hastings was driving a modern Mercedes. These come with everything like ABS, EPS, Servo steering, Electronic throttle control, automatic transmission and so forth. And as you might know, cars these days are basically computers on wheels intrepreting the users input to the devices output. So if you really wanted to "produce" a freak accident, like say, remote controlling the car into a palm tree. All you'd need to do was hack the onboard control computer, you probably wouldn't even need an RC receiver as you could probably reuse the builtin wifi/radio to input commands to the computer. So unless you perform forensic examination of the onboard computer (which is usually locked down with DRM so you aren't able to repair your own car anymore) there'd be zero evidence.

tzs 13y ago
Here's the fatal (no pun intended) problem with that theory: the groups capable of carrying that out are also smart enough to not go with such an unreliable plan. He was a reporter. Reporters are easy to lure to secretive meetings with anonymous strangers. You want to kill one? Shoot him at an anonymous meeting, using a non-traceable gun. Or better, use a gun that has been tied to organized crime. Simple and reliable.
- leot 13y ago
  How do you know how reliable (or not) this plan is?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Uh, duh? Look who you're talking to when you reply to them?
    - leot 13y ago
      I actually don't know who this commenter is.
    - tzs 13y ago
      Wait...what...? Did you just imply I'm a recognized authority on arranging reliable assassinations? I've had people make some weird inferences about my skills before (judging from the mystifying endorsements people have given me on LinkedIn), but assassination planning is still at the "I'm interested, but waiting for Coursera to offer a course before I actually get into it" stage.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Oh sorry, I forgot you're keeping that on the DL.
  - tzs 13y ago
    I'll write this from the viewpoint of those who want to kill him, as that makes for more straightforware writing. Here's what we need to do to carry out this killing using the car plan. We need to hack the car to accept some kind of remote control. This will require hacking at least the steering, the engine, and the brakes. We need all three because to ensure killing. If he can control one of them, he has a good chance of making the accident non-fatal. After we've got the car hacked and can remotely control it, we need to actually cause the accident. There are a couple of approaches here. One is to follow him around in our control vehicle into an opportunity arises. The other is to wait at some place that we know he is likely to go and that is a good place to make a fatal accident happen. After we've cause an accident, our problem with him is not yet solved. We still have to worry that someone will decide his death was not an accident, examine the car, find that it was tampered with, and maybe tie that to us. Even if it only leads to people we hired and we were competent enough to leave nothing that links them to us, we lose those contractors for future work. So, what can go wrong with this plan? First, we've got to do the car hacking. Even if steering, engine, and braking are all "fly by wire" on his car, they are likely to be separate systems. We are going to have to rig all three of them for remote control. We'll probably need to install some hardware for the remote control. Any suspicious contact with the target before killing him is risky, and right off the bat this plan involves complicated fucking around inside his car. If we do get his car rigged, then we have to actually take over and cause the accident. The "follow him around hoping for an opportunity" approach is not good. He could go weeks where he only drives in high traffic areas, where we won't get an opportunity to get him up to a speed that ensures a high chance of fatality. The longer we follow him, the more chance we'll be spotted, or that he'll take his car in for service and someone will find our remote control rig. Our chances are better if we know some place he regularly drives where conditions are better for an accident. Let's assume that is what actually happened--they were waiting for him at the place the "accident" actually happened, and consider how risky that was. Accelerating up to high speed and nailing a tree seems pretty straightforward. However, it's not as easy is it seems. If you check the photos of the crash scene, on some it looks like the trees are tightly packed, so it would be easy to nail one. However, those photos are looking down the street and mae the trees look more densly packed then they actually are. Find a photo looking from the side, and you can see the trees are much farther apart. If there is any noticeable lag in the remote control, it will actually be pretty hard to aim at a particular tree. Best you'll be able to do is veer toward the trees, and hope that when the car crosses the curb that doesn't turn it enough to send it between the trees. Even if you do hit a tree, it will be hard to ensure it is a good solid fatal hit, as opposed to some kind of off center hit that doesn't stop the car but just sends it spinning. But suppose we get lucky, and actually get a good fatal hit. We've arranged the accident in a place where it will be immediately noticied. We'll have civilians on the scene quickly--before the fire has died down enough to let us get in and make sure any evidence that we want destroyed was actually destroyed. Police and fire and ambulance services will arrive quickly. This is a Wile E. Coyote plan. In general, the more steps a plan has that must succeed for the plan to succeed, the lower the reliability of the plan. Shooting him at an anonymous meeting has two steps that must succeed. (1) Call him from a burner phone with a fake anonymous whistleblower story and arrange a meeting. (2) Shoot him when he shows up for the meeting. This either works, or it fails at step 1 leaving nothing behind to tie it to us and nothing to raise suspicion.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
shin_lao 13y ago
Please don't. The computer doesn't control the steering and breaks are mechanical. There's no remote control. Unless you sabotage the car, what you're saying is impossible. But if you sabotage the car, you don't need all the electronics. Just wear off the breaks or whatever else. I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings. Maybe you'd like to add some folklore or magic to what is a tragic, but trivial death.
- Amadou 13y ago
  I don't think it is available on a c250 sedan like hastings was apparently driving, but Mercedes (and other manufacturers) have systems that do control steering that could conceivably be remotely hijacked. All of the self-parking systems leave the accelerator to the driver but let the computer handle the steering. Here is a review of 4 different manufacturers' self-parking systems: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2012/12/06/self-parking-cars-challenge/1743199/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2012/12/06/self-par...
  - dakrisht 13y ago
    I have a Mercedes that self-parks if enabled. It steers the wheel (so the computer can fully steer the car 1000%) but it doesn't apply brakes or the accelerator. Which are also capable of being fully-controlled by the computer. Mercedes has an option (Distronic) where the car can accelerate and brake to a full stop based on the road conditions ahead. So basically, the on-board computer can fully steer, brake and accelerate/decelerate the vehicle.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    It (steering control) is available for C Class. Packages -> Lane Tracking Package +$850 http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-C/model-C250C#packages http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-C/model-C...
    - Amadou 13y ago
      FWIW, I looked that up and the active lane assist only "steers" by fiddling with the brakes on individual wheels.
tomjen3 13y ago
I could go with it being an accident if it wasn't for the fire and the transmission so far away. That can only be explained by an explosion and while fuel is combustible a fuel tank won't catch fire, Mythbusters shut one with tracer bullets and it still didn't blow up.
- lclarkmichalek 13y ago
  There is a massive difference between shooting tracers at a fuel tank and the tank being in a car crash. In the Mythbusters test, all of the bullets enter at roughly the same speed, roughly the same angle, have the same size, the same heat, and the environment is "clean"; the only objects that need to be considered are the bullets and the tank. In a car crash, the number of factors is massively increased. The fact that a fuel tank did not explode when it had tracer bullets fired at it does not imply that fuel tanks don't catch fire.
- numbsafari 13y ago
  Sorry, but even the Mythbusters are fallible. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22gip_video_auto http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22gip_video_auto That's a video of a car on the NJ Turnpike trying to blow through an EZ-Pass toll, and failing miserably. Notice: the damn thing explodes in a fiery ball. I guess you'll try and argue that the Toll Booths are designed to explode when cars run into them as a way to discourage such behavior. Who would even begin to think that shooting a tracer bullet into a gas tank even remotely recreates any of what is going on during a high-speed car accident?
dram 13y ago
There is also a black box (electronic data recorder) on that Mercedes. If something manipulated the system, you'd assume the EDR would record it. Not to mention it'd be a terrible place to try to kill someone, with cameras everywhere. And there's a ton of disinterested parties, from Mercedes, to the LAPD to voracious friends/fans to investigate the story.
- pyalot2 13y ago
  Well, let me just put on my tinfoil hat. Other commenter on the thread pointed to a paper demonstrating how pretty every car control function can be hacked and overriden. It can even be rigged to self-erase after crash. And I'm guessing, if you can do that, you can just rewrite the EDR on crash too with fake data and erase any trace of the hack. The argument of "this would've been a bad place" is pretty much null, for two reasons. First, if you assume the car was hacked, there wasn't anything to film or observe for anybody in the vincinity other than a driver going fast and then crashing, doesn't get much more perfect than that. And secondly, there'd have been friends/fans/police to investigate no matter where the guy died. That place is as good as any.

by pyalot2 13y ago

tzs 13y ago

Here's the fatal (no pun intended) problem with that theory: the groups capable of carrying that out are also smart enough to not go with such an unreliable plan. He was a reporter. Reporters are easy to lure to secretive meetings with anonymous strangers. You want to kill one? Shoot him at an anonymous meeting, using a non-traceable gun. Or better, use a gun that has been tied to organized crime. Simple and reliable.

leot 13y ago
How do you know how reliable (or not) this plan is?
- tptacek 13y ago
  Uh, duh? Look who you're talking to when you reply to them?
  - leot 13y ago
    I actually don't know who this commenter is.
  - tzs 13y ago
    Wait...what...? Did you just imply I'm a recognized authority on arranging reliable assassinations? I've had people make some weird inferences about my skills before (judging from the mystifying endorsements people have given me on LinkedIn), but assassination planning is still at the "I'm interested, but waiting for Coursera to offer a course before I actually get into it" stage.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Oh sorry, I forgot you're keeping that on the DL.
- tzs 13y ago
  I'll write this from the viewpoint of those who want to kill him, as that makes for more straightforware writing. Here's what we need to do to carry out this killing using the car plan. We need to hack the car to accept some kind of remote control. This will require hacking at least the steering, the engine, and the brakes. We need all three because to ensure killing. If he can control one of them, he has a good chance of making the accident non-fatal. After we've got the car hacked and can remotely control it, we need to actually cause the accident. There are a couple of approaches here. One is to follow him around in our control vehicle into an opportunity arises. The other is to wait at some place that we know he is likely to go and that is a good place to make a fatal accident happen. After we've cause an accident, our problem with him is not yet solved. We still have to worry that someone will decide his death was not an accident, examine the car, find that it was tampered with, and maybe tie that to us. Even if it only leads to people we hired and we were competent enough to leave nothing that links them to us, we lose those contractors for future work. So, what can go wrong with this plan? First, we've got to do the car hacking. Even if steering, engine, and braking are all "fly by wire" on his car, they are likely to be separate systems. We are going to have to rig all three of them for remote control. We'll probably need to install some hardware for the remote control. Any suspicious contact with the target before killing him is risky, and right off the bat this plan involves complicated fucking around inside his car. If we do get his car rigged, then we have to actually take over and cause the accident. The "follow him around hoping for an opportunity" approach is not good. He could go weeks where he only drives in high traffic areas, where we won't get an opportunity to get him up to a speed that ensures a high chance of fatality. The longer we follow him, the more chance we'll be spotted, or that he'll take his car in for service and someone will find our remote control rig. Our chances are better if we know some place he regularly drives where conditions are better for an accident. Let's assume that is what actually happened--they were waiting for him at the place the "accident" actually happened, and consider how risky that was. Accelerating up to high speed and nailing a tree seems pretty straightforward. However, it's not as easy is it seems. If you check the photos of the crash scene, on some it looks like the trees are tightly packed, so it would be easy to nail one. However, those photos are looking down the street and mae the trees look more densly packed then they actually are. Find a photo looking from the side, and you can see the trees are much farther apart. If there is any noticeable lag in the remote control, it will actually be pretty hard to aim at a particular tree. Best you'll be able to do is veer toward the trees, and hope that when the car crosses the curb that doesn't turn it enough to send it between the trees. Even if you do hit a tree, it will be hard to ensure it is a good solid fatal hit, as opposed to some kind of off center hit that doesn't stop the car but just sends it spinning. But suppose we get lucky, and actually get a good fatal hit. We've arranged the accident in a place where it will be immediately noticied. We'll have civilians on the scene quickly--before the fire has died down enough to let us get in and make sure any evidence that we want destroyed was actually destroyed. Police and fire and ambulance services will arrive quickly. This is a Wile E. Coyote plan. In general, the more steps a plan has that must succeed for the plan to succeed, the lower the reliability of the plan. Shooting him at an anonymous meeting has two steps that must succeed. (1) Call him from a burner phone with a fake anonymous whistleblower story and arrange a meeting. (2) Shoot him when he shows up for the meeting. This either works, or it fails at step 1 leaving nothing behind to tie it to us and nothing to raise suspicion.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

shin_lao 13y ago

Please don't. The computer doesn't control the steering and breaks are mechanical. There's no remote control. Unless you sabotage the car, what you're saying is impossible. But if you sabotage the car, you don't need all the electronics. Just wear off the breaks or whatever else. I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings. Maybe you'd like to add some folklore or magic to what is a tragic, but trivial death.

Amadou 13y ago
I don't think it is available on a c250 sedan like hastings was apparently driving, but Mercedes (and other manufacturers) have systems that do control steering that could conceivably be remotely hijacked. All of the self-parking systems leave the accelerator to the driver but let the computer handle the steering. Here is a review of 4 different manufacturers' self-parking systems: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2012/12/06/self-parking-cars-challenge/1743199/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2012/12/06/self-par...
- dakrisht 13y ago
  I have a Mercedes that self-parks if enabled. It steers the wheel (so the computer can fully steer the car 1000%) but it doesn't apply brakes or the accelerator. Which are also capable of being fully-controlled by the computer. Mercedes has an option (Distronic) where the car can accelerate and brake to a full stop based on the road conditions ahead. So basically, the on-board computer can fully steer, brake and accelerate/decelerate the vehicle.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  It (steering control) is available for C Class. Packages -> Lane Tracking Package +$850 http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-C/model-C250C#packages http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-C/model-C...
  - Amadou 13y ago
    FWIW, I looked that up and the active lane assist only "steers" by fiddling with the brakes on individual wheels.

tomjen3 13y ago

I could go with it being an accident if it wasn't for the fire and the transmission so far away. That can only be explained by an explosion and while fuel is combustible a fuel tank won't catch fire, Mythbusters shut one with tracer bullets and it still didn't blow up.

lclarkmichalek 13y ago
There is a massive difference between shooting tracers at a fuel tank and the tank being in a car crash. In the Mythbusters test, all of the bullets enter at roughly the same speed, roughly the same angle, have the same size, the same heat, and the environment is "clean"; the only objects that need to be considered are the bullets and the tank. In a car crash, the number of factors is massively increased. The fact that a fuel tank did not explode when it had tracer bullets fired at it does not imply that fuel tanks don't catch fire.
numbsafari 13y ago
Sorry, but even the Mythbusters are fallible. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22gip_video_auto http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22gip_video_auto That's a video of a car on the NJ Turnpike trying to blow through an EZ-Pass toll, and failing miserably. Notice: the damn thing explodes in a fiery ball. I guess you'll try and argue that the Toll Booths are designed to explode when cars run into them as a way to discourage such behavior. Who would even begin to think that shooting a tracer bullet into a gas tank even remotely recreates any of what is going on during a high-speed car accident?

dram 13y ago

There is also a black box (electronic data recorder) on that Mercedes. If something manipulated the system, you'd assume the EDR would record it. Not to mention it'd be a terrible place to try to kill someone, with cameras everywhere. And there's a ton of disinterested parties, from Mercedes, to the LAPD to voracious friends/fans to investigate the story.

pyalot2 13y ago
Well, let me just put on my tinfoil hat. Other commenter on the thread pointed to a paper demonstrating how pretty every car control function can be hacked and overriden. It can even be rigged to self-erase after crash. And I'm guessing, if you can do that, you can just rewrite the EDR on crash too with fake data and erase any trace of the hack. The argument of "this would've been a bad place" is pretty much null, for two reasons. First, if you assume the car was hacked, there wasn't anything to film or observe for anybody in the vincinity other than a driver going fast and then crashing, doesn't get much more perfect than that. And secondly, there'd have been friends/fans/police to investigate no matter where the guy died. That place is as good as any.