Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Scary. Hacker takes over a new Chrysler wirelessly.

Slashdot posted this.  The perp claims to have gained control of most of the Chrysler's systems, including the brakes, remotely by wireless. 
    I was thinking about getting a new car, as my 2003 Mercury is rusting out.  Do I want to buy something that hackers can take over remotely?  All the hacker has to do is give a playful little touch of the gas or the brakes while I'm going up three mile hill in a snowstorm to put me in the ditch.  PITA. 
   Actually, this points to atrociously bad design on Chrysler's part.  They have forgotten the principle of modularity.  Each module of the system (brakes, steering, suspension, engine etc) should be modular, stand alone, so that should other systems fail, it will keep on working, because it is not connected.  Clearly the designers of this car were hooking stuff together just for the fun of it.   There is no reason for the car computers to have any connections to the brakes.  I want my brakes to go on when I press the brake pedal, and for no other reason.  I don't want to give a malfunctioning microprocessor under the hood a chance to screw up my brakes. 

2 comments:

Dstarr said...

Fox News just reported that Chrysler is gonna do a recall to fix the problem. Good.

Dstarr said...

And the Wall St Journal reports that the Feds are going to investigate Chrysler over the recall. Way to go Feds.