8 ms·

So, it's becoming abundantly clear that vehicle companies (autos, jets...) have approximately zero knowledge how to hire software engineers. Presumably they're

So, it's becoming abundantly clear that vehicle companies (autos, jets...) have approximately zero knowledge how to hire software engineers. Presumably they're somewhat more successful hiring mechanical engineers because that's always been their "thing". It's all well and good for us to chuckle at the terrifying software/systems decisions being made by these teams, but how do we address the root of the problem? It's very clear that entire meta-categories of horrific errors are being made at a very fundamental level. Is this a problem of outsourcing? Of confusing "coders" with engineers? And how do we solve it? Shame the software team such that they can never get hired in a serious role again anywhere? Professionalize the job into a strictly licensed regime like other branches of engineering? Whenever I read these types of articles, my main thought has always been, "so who, the hell, wrote the code?" It'd be interesting to know their story.

lmm 11y ago
People, and businesses, respond to incentives. The company probably did the economically rational thing here - the money they make from their remote-access features is more than the money they will lose for the insecurity. Companies in industries that need to find ways to make secure software; it's not a hard problem if you're willing to throw enough money at it. But as long as customers don't care whether their products or data are secure, we'll get the security we pay for.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  People do care if it makes the news. But the current official ways of doing the testing doesn't make the news and testing that is news worth gets the cops called on you. How convenient that testing a security flaw is viewed as more negligent than allowing them in the first place as a cost saving measure.
  - lmm 11y ago
    Allowing the flaw was negligent. This test was reckless. The law treats knowingly ignoring a risk as worse than unknowingly allowing one.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Unknowingly allowing a risk is a very generous way to describe policies that cut costs by increasing the chance of these risks. The ones who are endangering a small number of people to try to overall increase safety are currently looking at far more legal harm than those who endangered magnitudes more people for the sake of making more money. Don't contribute to stupidity what can be explained by amoral greed.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
justincormack 11y ago
I imagine a not terribly experienced new team being told to do connected stuff in a car, not really understanding security and having ridiculous demands thrown at them as the manufacturer drools about getting subscription revenue from every car. But would be nice to have an inside story.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jpindar 11y ago
  I don't know about the automotive industry, but this is absolutely true at some industrial equipment manufacturers.
maxerickson 11y ago
Are you pointing to the stellar security record of the software industry here?
- bennyg 11y ago
  Exactly. I'd like to see the perfect security implementations over large scale systems that exist in the software industry today.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - yoklov 11y ago
    Aviation is doing pretty well. I'd hope for the same standard of safety and security from automobile manufacturers.
a3n 11y ago
The same shift to focus on security is happening with medical devices and the FDA. Maybe that's one place to look for success and failure.
kazinator 11y ago
The fact that a dashboard system that controls your radio or AC has access to cut your transmission is also a hardware configuration issue. Accessories should be physically secured from ignition and drive train. The internet connected features of the car, in turn, should be severed from both of these. It should not be physically possible to turn on the wipers from the embedded processor that receives packets on the IP address of the car.
- adamgravitis 11y ago
  For sures. The ECEs are very much complicit too. Perhaps this is a ECE<->software team communication or power problem? ECEs invent the systems architecture and some poor chap has to attempt to secure the thing? Or maybe the software guys have no avenue to push back against bad systems-level design.
- cameldrv 11y ago
  And what are we going to do for self-driving cars? These are almost certainly going to rely heavily on internet access to perform basic driving functions. Figuring out how to make complex systems like these be secure in a trustworthy way is going to be a huge challenge as more and more critical devices are connected to the Internet.
  - leereeves 11y ago
    No way a self driving car can rely on Internet access to "perform basic driving functions". Lag and connection failures would kill people. They might need Internet access for updates, in which case, there should be a physical switch that connects the net and disables the engine.
    - philipw 11y ago
      An air gap is hardly a solution for traffic information the route planner HAS to talk to the computer responsible for getting from A to B. In the same way that firewalls are no longer particularly relevant, air gaps appear to be flawed now too, the only way to solve any security issue is better code quality..
mtabini 11y ago
I don't think this has necessarily anything to do with engineering competence. From a business perspective, security isn't a marketable feature until it becomes a problem—you don't install safety belts, or airbags, or protection against malware until after people start suffering from their absence in a vehicle. Why? Because while you're busy building a well-secured system, your competitors are busy implementing new features that give them an actual advantage in the marketplace. As unfortunate as it might be, consumers tend to understand things like “remotely start your car with your phone” better than “your ability to brake won't be taken away from you while you're barrelling down the highway at 70 mph.” It's sad and more than a little scary, but it's also nothing really new. Computer security, at least in the consumer sector, wasn't really a feature until viruses started showing up in the Eighties, and Internet security wasn't really a feature until the average Windows user's PC was getting taken over remotely the moment it was connected to the Net. Even Apple has only been able to tout security and privacy as a feature in its products by juxtaposing it to Google's business model—had the latter not existed and its data grab become part of public discourse, I doubt that Cupertino would have been able to make so much noise about it. So, it's perfectly possible that every engineer and manager who worked on these systems is really quite competent and perfectly aware of the potential for security flaws (indeed, I doubt that they would have been able to make something so complex work otherwise), and still the sum of all the decisions made and market pressures applied caused the resulting product to be so vulnerable despite everyone's best intentions. It's not because people don't care or don't know, but rather because there are only so many resources available, and the market has pushed them all in a specific direction that happens to be away from security. But this is also why we need this kind of research. Now that these problems are out in the open, and politicians are starting to take notice, security will become a feature that the public will care about, and, hopefully, car manufacturers will start adopting (or be forced to adopt) better standards.
- judemelancon 11y ago
  Ethics are part of competence in my opinion. Even if you disagree, preventing corporate liability is a component of competence in the law's opinion. That is, if the company is found liable, that's saying the employees responsible did something wrong, even if it's not holding them individually accountable.
xirdstl 11y ago
For the same reason I am skeptical of the "Internet of Things". Do we really want every device in our home to be exploitable from someone across the globe? Continually applying firmware updates to appliances to close security holes? Something fundamental has to change about how we handle device security before I want to live in that world.
- _lce0 11y ago
  exactly! I want all my devices to be as dumb as wires. Wired technology just works, out-of-the-box, no setup, no maintenance, no nothing .. just make sure the plug fit in both ends, and done! Wireless technology should work similar, but via the air, like an invisible wire .. not as a open gate to the internet! ..and please let's not add multi-purpose CPU just for the sake of marketing!
  - pyre 11y ago
    What? The Internet of Things is equally exploitable if your devices are connected over ethernet (or ethernet over powerlines). The key factor is whether or not it's connected to the Internet.
therobot24 11y ago
I think this also comes down to the curriculum and training that Computer Engineers receive during undergrad. Since the core courses touch embedded, hardware design, and software we're left with only the basics. Coming from the Detroit/Big 3 area a lot of my colleagues went off to Toyota (in ann arbor), GM, Chrysler, Ford, or one of their suppliers/contractors (Denzo et al.); and from what i've been told is that they do put a lot of effort into software, however it's focus is more on stability and function as opposed to security and portability. This doesn't mean they're doing a good job though. Here's a link to where i previous discuss this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9801769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9801769
tjr 11y ago
Which entire meta-categories of horrific errors do you ascribe to software development for jets? Commercial avionics, while not error-free, is surely one of the most stringent sectors of software development around today.
PinguTS 11y ago
Get a German car and you will not have such problems from what I know from my people. ;)
extc 11y ago
What's more probable? a) The developers were this incompetent b) This "exploit" was a feature requested by the DHS
- grkvlt 11y ago
  Oh, I know this one! Is it c) "The developers were competent at designing car control software, but insufficiently concerned about the possibilities for remote control, and therefore didn't test appropriately"?

lmm 11y ago

People, and businesses, respond to incentives. The company probably did the economically rational thing here - the money they make from their remote-access features is more than the money they will lose for the insecurity. Companies in industries that need to find ways to make secure software; it's not a hard problem if you're willing to throw enough money at it. But as long as customers don't care whether their products or data are secure, we'll get the security we pay for.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
People do care if it makes the news. But the current official ways of doing the testing doesn't make the news and testing that is news worth gets the cops called on you. How convenient that testing a security flaw is viewed as more negligent than allowing them in the first place as a cost saving measure.
- lmm 11y ago
  Allowing the flaw was negligent. This test was reckless. The law treats knowingly ignoring a risk as worse than unknowingly allowing one.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Unknowingly allowing a risk is a very generous way to describe policies that cut costs by increasing the chance of these risks. The ones who are endangering a small number of people to try to overall increase safety are currently looking at far more legal harm than those who endangered magnitudes more people for the sake of making more money. Don't contribute to stupidity what can be explained by amoral greed.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

justincormack 11y ago

I imagine a not terribly experienced new team being told to do connected stuff in a car, not really understanding security and having ridiculous demands thrown at them as the manufacturer drools about getting subscription revenue from every car. But would be nice to have an inside story.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jpindar 11y ago
I don't know about the automotive industry, but this is absolutely true at some industrial equipment manufacturers.

maxerickson 11y ago

Are you pointing to the stellar security record of the software industry here?

bennyg 11y ago
Exactly. I'd like to see the perfect security implementations over large scale systems that exist in the software industry today.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- yoklov 11y ago
  Aviation is doing pretty well. I'd hope for the same standard of safety and security from automobile manufacturers.

a3n 11y ago

The same shift to focus on security is happening with medical devices and the FDA. Maybe that's one place to look for success and failure.

kazinator 11y ago

The fact that a dashboard system that controls your radio or AC has access to cut your transmission is also a hardware configuration issue. Accessories should be physically secured from ignition and drive train. The internet connected features of the car, in turn, should be severed from both of these. It should not be physically possible to turn on the wipers from the embedded processor that receives packets on the IP address of the car.

adamgravitis 11y ago
For sures. The ECEs are very much complicit too. Perhaps this is a ECE<->software team communication or power problem? ECEs invent the systems architecture and some poor chap has to attempt to secure the thing? Or maybe the software guys have no avenue to push back against bad systems-level design.
cameldrv 11y ago
And what are we going to do for self-driving cars? These are almost certainly going to rely heavily on internet access to perform basic driving functions. Figuring out how to make complex systems like these be secure in a trustworthy way is going to be a huge challenge as more and more critical devices are connected to the Internet.
- leereeves 11y ago
  No way a self driving car can rely on Internet access to "perform basic driving functions". Lag and connection failures would kill people. They might need Internet access for updates, in which case, there should be a physical switch that connects the net and disables the engine.
  - philipw 11y ago
    An air gap is hardly a solution for traffic information the route planner HAS to talk to the computer responsible for getting from A to B. In the same way that firewalls are no longer particularly relevant, air gaps appear to be flawed now too, the only way to solve any security issue is better code quality..

mtabini 11y ago

I don't think this has necessarily anything to do with engineering competence. From a business perspective, security isn't a marketable feature until it becomes a problem—you don't install safety belts, or airbags, or protection against malware until after people start suffering from their absence in a vehicle. Why? Because while you're busy building a well-secured system, your competitors are busy implementing new features that give them an actual advantage in the marketplace. As unfortunate as it might be, consumers tend to understand things like “remotely start your car with your phone” better than “your ability to brake won't be taken away from you while you're barrelling down the highway at 70 mph.” It's sad and more than a little scary, but it's also nothing really new. Computer security, at least in the consumer sector, wasn't really a feature until viruses started showing up in the Eighties, and Internet security wasn't really a feature until the average Windows user's PC was getting taken over remotely the moment it was connected to the Net. Even Apple has only been able to tout security and privacy as a feature in its products by juxtaposing it to Google's business model—had the latter not existed and its data grab become part of public discourse, I doubt that Cupertino would have been able to make so much noise about it. So, it's perfectly possible that every engineer and manager who worked on these systems is really quite competent and perfectly aware of the potential for security flaws (indeed, I doubt that they would have been able to make something so complex work otherwise), and still the sum of all the decisions made and market pressures applied caused the resulting product to be so vulnerable despite everyone's best intentions. It's not because people don't care or don't know, but rather because there are only so many resources available, and the market has pushed them all in a specific direction that happens to be away from security. But this is also why we need this kind of research. Now that these problems are out in the open, and politicians are starting to take notice, security will become a feature that the public will care about, and, hopefully, car manufacturers will start adopting (or be forced to adopt) better standards.

judemelancon 11y ago
Ethics are part of competence in my opinion. Even if you disagree, preventing corporate liability is a component of competence in the law's opinion. That is, if the company is found liable, that's saying the employees responsible did something wrong, even if it's not holding them individually accountable.

xirdstl 11y ago

For the same reason I am skeptical of the "Internet of Things". Do we really want every device in our home to be exploitable from someone across the globe? Continually applying firmware updates to appliances to close security holes? Something fundamental has to change about how we handle device security before I want to live in that world.

_lce0 11y ago
exactly! I want all my devices to be as dumb as wires. Wired technology just works, out-of-the-box, no setup, no maintenance, no nothing .. just make sure the plug fit in both ends, and done! Wireless technology should work similar, but via the air, like an invisible wire .. not as a open gate to the internet! ..and please let's not add multi-purpose CPU just for the sake of marketing!
- pyre 11y ago
  What? The Internet of Things is equally exploitable if your devices are connected over ethernet (or ethernet over powerlines). The key factor is whether or not it's connected to the Internet.

therobot24 11y ago

I think this also comes down to the curriculum and training that Computer Engineers receive during undergrad. Since the core courses touch embedded, hardware design, and software we're left with only the basics. Coming from the Detroit/Big 3 area a lot of my colleagues went off to Toyota (in ann arbor), GM, Chrysler, Ford, or one of their suppliers/contractors (Denzo et al.); and from what i've been told is that they do put a lot of effort into software, however it's focus is more on stability and function as opposed to security and portability. This doesn't mean they're doing a good job though. Here's a link to where i previous discuss this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9801769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9801769

tjr 11y ago

Which entire meta-categories of horrific errors do you ascribe to software development for jets? Commercial avionics, while not error-free, is surely one of the most stringent sectors of software development around today.

PinguTS 11y ago

Get a German car and you will not have such problems from what I know from my people. ;)

extc 11y ago

What's more probable? a) The developers were this incompetent b) This "exploit" was a feature requested by the DHS

grkvlt 11y ago
Oh, I know this one! Is it c) "The developers were competent at designing car control software, but insufficiently concerned about the possibilities for remote control, and therefore didn't test appropriately"?