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Cars Hacked Through Wireless Tire Sensors


okiwan

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The tire pressure monitors built into modern cars have been shown to be insecure by researchers from Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina. The wireless sensors, compulsory in new automobiles in the US since 2008, can be used to track vehicles or feed bad data to the electronic control units (ECU), causing them to malfunction.

Earlier in the year, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California San Diego showed that the ECUs could be hacked, giving attackers the ability to be both annoying, by enabling wipers or honking the horn, and dangerous, by disabling the brakes or jamming the accelerator.

The new research shows that other systems in the vehicle are similarly insecure. The tire pressure monitors are notable because they're wireless, allowing attacks to be made from adjacent vehicles. The researchers used equipment costing $1,500, including radio sensors and special software, to eavesdrop on, and interfere with, two different tire pressure monitoring systems.

The pressure sensors contain unique IDs, so merely eavesdropping enabled the researchers to identify and track vehicles remotely. Beyond this, they could alter and forge the readings to cause warning lights on the dashboard to turn on, or even crash the ECU completely.

Unlike the work earlier this year, these attacks are more of a nuisance than any real danger; the tire sensors only send a message every 60-90 seconds, giving attackers little opportunity to compromise systems or cause any real damage. Nonetheless, both pieces of research demonstrate that these in-car computers have been designed with ineffective security measures.

The Rutgers and South Carolina research will be presented at the USENIX Security conference later this week.

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I definitely don't want to own a car with a flawed ECU, image someone disabling your brakes while you driving at high speeds, not a very good ending.

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I definitely don't want to own a car with a flawed ECU, image someone disabling your brakes while you driving at high speeds, not a very good ending.

E Brake... It's a manual brake.

I'd be more concerned with someone blowing my airbags while driving or not.

VERY expensive to fix...

Edited by Mr-Protocol
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on high speeds E-Brakes are more dangerous than not having breaks at all!

If you don't know what you're doing, you'll spin out and the best case walk out with a few scratches...

Why can't we go back to the stone age and have fully mechanical cars, where driver decides what to do?

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a good way to get rid of some one you dont like...

I have so many people in mind that I would do that for. Thanks for giving me that idea.

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realistically what do cars need technology wise.

a gps.

an ecu... for engine mangement only...

an mp3 player and in car video...

thats it.

I don't need internet in my car if i have my smartphone...

I dont need some douche to tell me what my tyre pressure is..

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a gps.

an ecu... for engine mangement only...

an mp3 player and in car video...

LOL, car needs those things? my first car didn't even have power steering or power brakes.

I guess i'm just an old fashioned type of guy.

An I would guess the E-brake would be good as long as you don't just yank/slam it. Also depending on you car, downshifting is always an option, would be tough on those cars that only have a drive, second and first though...I think third would do decent going 60-ish...it wouldn't be good for the engine. but alot better then slamming into a semi...unless you flip it.

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