Forget the Kia Boyz: Crooks could hijack your car with just a smartphone Put away that screwdriver and USB charging cable – the latest way to steal a Kia just requires a cellphone and the victim's license plate number. Sam Curry, who previously demonstrated remote takeover vulnerabilities in a range of brands – from Toyota to Rolls Royce – found this vulnerability in vehicles as old as model year …
Of course all modern cars in the EU are now supposed to be permanently connected, but if we're talking an exploit going back as far as 2014 then it would only likely have been for a few top-of-the-range models at the time, because most required you to plug in to the OBD2 interface, and even the entertainment systems generally required a separate mobile phone hotspot for connectivity.
Yup.
I have something of a manifesto on what my ideal next vehicle would be; the problem is that it doesn't exist, at least not in mass production.
It boils down to:
give me buttons for all major controls- do not put it all on a single, multi-thousand dollar tablet that can disable the car by putting a brick through it, or get trashed by ~140 degree heat (Arizona summers, yo.)
NO SUBSCRIPTION FEATURES. The sole exception might be satellite radio, and not even then. Bluetooth is OK for CarPlay.
my car was made in May 2020, even though the complimentary airtime has run out, it still reports telemetry to its creator.
The app shows me miles covered, tyre pressures, battery & fuel level.
if i pay for their services i can restore remote opening, tracking, map updates & traffic etc but its truly not worth the £30 a month they want for the package of useful features.
Gotta wonder what it would actually take for manufacturers to stop putting the common functions like ventilation and AC in the touch screen. Go back to physical buttons. And not just in the screen, but elsewhere on the dash - VW, I'm looking at you with your dumbass touch sliders for heater controls. Which don't illuminate at night! (Although in the some of the newest models they have at least illuminated them, but it's still a stupid idea).
A few are maybe starting to get the message, and removing some of the more stupid touch functionality, but it's not enough. Anything you have to take your eyes off the road to operate is outright dangerous and ought to be banned. And I'm not usually in favour of banning things, but this insanity has to stop. It can't be much less distracting than reading a short text message on your mobile, and we made that illegal.
How hard is it to mandate that all new cars sold must have physical, non-touch-sensitive controls for essential functions? Controls you can find by feel and muscle memory, and must be illuminated.
Cut off it's tweeter?
Most of these systems aren't essential to the working of the vehicle, so with a little research you can probably unplug the antenna or SIM/cellular module. Unless it throws the car in limp home mode you may be able to live with a nagging dash warning or check engine scan code.
OR THE HEADLIGHTS.
(I know, the obvious question is "WHY DO THE F^&KING HEADLIGHTS NEED CANBUS ACCESS!?!?!!?" Well, dimming, daytime running lights, turn signals, it's all integrated into that one hefty module, and since there's electronics on it, it has to be on the CANbus for the body control module to talk to.)
This is also why replacing the taillight on a brand new, modern Ford F-150 costs several thousand dollars, because not only are they canbus equipment, they are also serial number matched like fricking apple products.
Even with all those functions, you could still handle it with multiple wires feeding individual functions. A multiplug. Like cars used to have. Zero need for it to be on the canbus.
Can't really be about saving weight... how much is actually saved by replacing some wires with a module (which has to be hardened to survive vibration and exposure)?
Saving time during the build perhaps? But then whether your techs route one wire or a thicker bundle following the same path doesn't really make any difference either.
So... just because...?
hacking public companies prior to their earnings announcements to steal information used to make money in the stock market.
Well good luck with that — half of the time the stock crashes despite companies announcing earnings above expectations. It's almost like the stock market is acting completely randomly
...to keep old cars running.
My current daily is from 2005. It's nearly 20 years old. OK, it gets 24mpg on a good day which isn't ideal, but other than that I am yet to find anything that a newer car would do for me that it doesn't and there is precisely zero need for it to be connected to the internet to do anything. I get in and out by walking up to it, getting the key out, pressing the button on the key. I'm going to need to have the key on me anyway to start the bloody thing, so is it really such a hardship to have to take it out of my pocket and press a button?
I keep thinking "It's really old, I should replace it" but... why? What on earth would I be getting - other than better fuel economy - that I actually want? Sure, at some point it will develop a terminal case of rust that will cost more to repair than I can justify, but when I compare it to my mother's car which is 15 years newer, what I mostly think is "Thank god mine doesn't do that" every time it beeps at me for something.
"You're reversing!" ...I know. I just put it in reverse.
"You're speeding!" ...I know. I'm overtaking that bus.
"You've left the door open for more than 2 minutes!" ...I know. I'm loading the shopping.
Every bloody thing you do it beeps! I know the door is open. I know I'm in reverse. I know I don't have my seatbelt on. I know the traction control is off. Just shut up with the god-damned beeping!
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