Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It's time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published May two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. It is called Hack That Auto two point
Speaker 1: oh and I had a special guest co host on
Speaker 1: that show, Joe McCormick. Joe is one of the co
Speaker 1: hosts of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. He was also
Speaker 1: one of my co hosts on Forward Thinking, the audio podcast,
Speaker 1: and he was also a writer on the video series
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Joe is one incredibly intelligent person, even if
Speaker 1: he doesn't recognize Douglas Adams quotes. And let's have them
Speaker 1: take it away. Hacking can mean any thing, right like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily the connotation we typically assigned to it
Speaker 1: is someone is trying to gain unauthorized access to something,
Speaker 1: which really is a subset of hacking exactly. Hacking really
Speaker 1: could mean that you are building stuff, like you could
Speaker 1: be a maker. You're trying to create a device that
Speaker 1: does a very specific thing, and it maybe to do
Speaker 1: it in a way that no one has done before it,
Speaker 1: maybe to increase efficiency efficiency maybe the furthest thing from
Speaker 1: your mind. It might just be to do something creatively.
Speaker 1: And in that previous episode of Hack that Auto, Ben
Speaker 1: and I covered lots of ways where you could use
Speaker 1: technology to alter a vehicle in order to make it
Speaker 1: do something that it was either not intended to do
Speaker 1: or that had been limitations that have been placed upon
Speaker 1: it at the manufacturing stage. WHOA, So you mean like
Speaker 1: you could overclock your car the same way you can
Speaker 1: overclock your CPU. Well, maybe not the same way, but
Speaker 1: getting a very similar response. Because there are governors and
Speaker 1: speed limitters vehicles right where it is set so that
Speaker 1: the engine might be capable of producing enough power to
Speaker 1: get you to a speed above the quote unquote top
Speaker 1: speed of your vehicle, but there are are elements inside
Speaker 1: the vehicle that limit those speeds, like you can't go
Speaker 1: beyond them because they essentially cut the power, so you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get more out of it.
Speaker 1: But if you hack your vehicle, you could, in theory,
Speaker 1: remove said limitations at your own peril and be able
Speaker 1: to go faster than what the vehicle's manufacturer had intended,
Speaker 1: you know, at the risk of sounding like a gullible sheep.
Speaker 1: I bet those limitations are there for a decent reason.
Speaker 1: They tend to be yeah, like I could probably damage
Speaker 1: your vehicle or do something unsafe if you exceed them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have you ever been in
Speaker 1: a car where it reached a certain speed and the
Speaker 1: car was beginning to feel like it was not enjoying
Speaker 1: that experience. Yeah, the first car I had, if you
Speaker 1: got up to about fifty five or so, it felt
Speaker 1: like it was about to come apart. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there are some cars where, even right off the lot,
Speaker 1: if you are pushing it at towards the top speed,
Speaker 1: you start to feel like, yeah, this vehicle is not
Speaker 1: really meant to maintain this for any length of time.
Speaker 1: But there are people who want to have that full
Speaker 1: control of their vehicle, and they want to be able
Speaker 1: to do things with their vehicle that perhaps the manufacturer
Speaker 1: had put limitations on, and they will hack their their cars.
Speaker 1: And this is made possible by well a couple of things.
Speaker 1: If you have a car that's more than twenty years old,
Speaker 1: then you might be able to mechanically alter that vehicle. Right.
Speaker 1: But as vehicles have become more and more complex More
Speaker 1: and more of those uh, those those systems have become computerized,
Speaker 1: and it's falling into what some people call the black
Speaker 1: box problem, which is where you have a system that
Speaker 1: is essentially contained within a black box, and it is
Speaker 1: very difficult, if not impossible, to get access inside that
Speaker 1: black box. You can alter what happens once this is
Speaker 1: what what whatever the output is of that system, you
Speaker 1: can alter that, and you can alter the arrangement of
Speaker 1: various black box systems. But if you don't have that
Speaker 1: special diagnostic computer right or any other means of tapping
Speaker 1: into it, then you're kind of stuck. And and the
Speaker 1: argument is that the technology is reaching a level of
Speaker 1: complexity where the tinker is becoming more and more rarefied,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's harder to be a tinker in that
Speaker 1: world because things are getting so specialized and so advanced
Speaker 1: that it requires a good deal of specialization just to
Speaker 1: alter one thing, let alone all the other related systems.
Speaker 1: I feel like we talked about this in an early
Speaker 1: episode of the Forward Thinking podcast. This sounds very familiar.
Speaker 1: But okay, so that's how you hack your own vehicle
Speaker 1: to improve or maybe not improve but change it. Sure,
Speaker 1: but what about the more you know. The more popular
Speaker 1: sense of hacking these days where talking about violating a
Speaker 1: supposedly secure system making it work for you. So Ben
Speaker 1: and I talked about this as well, and overwhelmingly the
Speaker 1: most prevalent version of that kind of hacking required physical
Speaker 1: access to the vehicle and that you would have a
Speaker 1: laptop that you would plug in with an adapter to
Speaker 1: your your cars computer system, and with that laptop you
Speaker 1: could alter things with the vehicle. In fact, you could
Speaker 1: even set it up so that you could have remote
Speaker 1: control of the vehicle through the laptop that's still physically
Speaker 1: attached to the car. Oh wow, I wouldn't. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: really expect that with it. I mean, I could see
Speaker 1: how that could be coming with autonomous cars. But I'm
Speaker 1: so you could control like gas and break and steering.
Speaker 1: You could certainly control things like brakes and steering. Uh,
Speaker 1: not necessarily acceleration, although you could do that too, I assume,
Speaker 1: but you could certainly alter things like you could you
Speaker 1: could make the brakes stopped working, and in fact, there
Speaker 1: have been demonstrations where people have done that where it
Speaker 1: was done in a safe way. But to show that,
Speaker 1: like the anti lock brake system would be disconnected, so
Speaker 1: that hitting the brake would do nothing and the car
Speaker 1: would continue on as if you hadn't hit the brake
Speaker 1: at all. Just kind of terrifying to think about. But
Speaker 1: there was a laptop computer sitting right there, plugged into
Speaker 1: the dashboard. It was just that the commands. Like, think
Speaker 1: of it this way, it's the same thing as if
Speaker 1: someone were sitting in the passenger seat sending the commands
Speaker 1: from the laptop directly to your car's computer. Only you
Speaker 1: have removed the need for a person to be sitting
Speaker 1: there because you have a remote system sitting the commands
Speaker 1: to the laptop, which then send the commands to the
Speaker 1: car computer. Well, if you're gonna do that, you might
Speaker 1: as well just say, well, somebody sitting in the passenger
Speaker 1: seat could reach over and grab the steering wheel, right,
Speaker 1: And that was the point, right, That was the point
Speaker 1: that allot of the car manufacturers were making, that a
Speaker 1: lot of security experts were making. They said, these examples
Speaker 1: require somebody to have physical access to your vehicle in
Speaker 1: order for them to make these alterations, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily something to go out and panic over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that doesn't really bother me? What would really bother me?
Speaker 1: And and a quick digression, I think you and I
Speaker 1: are both on the record as being pretty pro autonomous vehicle.
Speaker 1: I am on it would be harder for me to
Speaker 1: be more pro autonomous vehicle. I am also very pro
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle despite all these concerns, And one of these
Speaker 1: concerns is what if somebody could wirelessly hack an autonomous vehicle?
Speaker 1: And that seems like, I mean, hopefully the industry will
Speaker 1: take all the proper steps to prevent that from happening,
Speaker 1: But autonomous vehicles do need to be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with each other, so it seems like they may possibly
Speaker 1: have some wireless based vulnerabilities. And there are cars out
Speaker 1: there right now that have wireless vulnerabilities, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about specifics in a little bit. So you are
Speaker 1: at slutely right that autonomous cars will have these because
Speaker 1: we have cars right now that have these these wireless
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities from from various systems. Uh, there have been examples
Speaker 1: of people using the entertainment systems within certain cars to
Speaker 1: hack into the rest of the vehicle. Now you would
Speaker 1: think that these should be networks within a car that
Speaker 1: are completely separate that don't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: one another. But there are times where, either because the
Speaker 1: design is simpler or because of well intentioned reasons, the
Speaker 1: they are coupled more closely. Like imagine that you have
Speaker 1: an entertainment system that is wired in such a way
Speaker 1: where the volume of the system will automatically adjust based
Speaker 1: upon your acceleration. So if you accelerate more, the volume
Speaker 1: goes up because it figures, hey, now it's going to
Speaker 1: be a noisier environment, so I need to balance out
Speaker 1: by becoming louder so that the person can continue to
Speaker 1: have the same experience listening to whatever they're listening to,
Speaker 1: whether they're going slowly or quickly. Well, that means that
Speaker 1: there needs to be some data coming from the drive
Speaker 1: system of the vehicle, and it may just be data,
Speaker 1: and it may just flow one way, which would be
Speaker 1: the best way to implement that, but it may mean
Speaker 1: that these systems are more connected than you had first imagined.
Speaker 1: So as we get into more WiFi based entertainment systems,
Speaker 1: that is a potential point of vulnerability for vehicles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a thing that just occurs to me is that
Speaker 1: hopefully anybody who made these would sort of have entertainment
Speaker 1: systems running on what's essentially a different computer than the
Speaker 1: computer that controls the engine. Otherwise it seems like it
Speaker 1: could be vulnerable to the kind of buffer overflow attack
Speaker 1: or something where you, uh, you have some kind of
Speaker 1: like you max out the memory on something and then
Speaker 1: you start and then once you've maxed out that area,
Speaker 1: it overflows into a place where you can just execute
Speaker 1: some code. Right. Yeah, that's a good example. I mean that,
Speaker 1: that's certainly so something that that needs to be thought
Speaker 1: about when designing these systems. And to make this more complicated,
Speaker 1: we have things like, you know, the wireless entry systems
Speaker 1: which can be spoofed, although it's not easy to do so.
Speaker 1: So wireless obviously that's when you've got, you know, your
Speaker 1: little key fob and you push a button and it
Speaker 1: unlocks the door so you can get into your car. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those work on little radio signals, and it is possible
Speaker 1: to broadcast radio signals at a car and activate it's
Speaker 1: unlocking mechanism. It's not easy, and the reason it's not
Speaker 1: easy is that you need to know generally what frequency
Speaker 1: this thing is broadcasting over, so it may require you
Speaker 1: to be in the presence of the key fob being used.
Speaker 1: In order to pick up on this frequency, you really
Speaker 1: need to know probably the beginning of the code, which
Speaker 1: again you can sometimes glean by listening in essentially on
Speaker 1: that key fob um and then you have to brute
Speaker 1: force attack because the way key fobs work is it
Speaker 1: works with a rolling algorithm, So every time you press
Speaker 1: that button, it changes the code, so the cook but
Speaker 1: it's changed based upon an algorithm, so it's based upon
Speaker 1: specific rules. It's not random, because if it were random,
Speaker 1: no car would ever know when it's key is being used, right,
Speaker 1: but it But that means that if you are using
Speaker 1: a remote attack to try and get access to a vehicle,
Speaker 1: then you have to do a brute force so this
Speaker 1: can take minutes up to hours, depending upon uh the
Speaker 1: system and depending upon your luck based upon where you're
Speaker 1: starting from the code. And also it means that if
Speaker 1: you have a keyless entry and you go to your
Speaker 1: car and you try and use it and someone has
Speaker 1: remotely accessed your vehicle, one of the only ways you
Speaker 1: might be able to tell, assuming that your vehicle is
Speaker 1: still there, is that is that it takes a couple
Speaker 1: of presses before anything works, because it will take a
Speaker 1: while for the the code on your key fob to
Speaker 1: match up with the code that's in the car. So
Speaker 1: in other words, of press it and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: nothing's happening, and you pressed a couple more times, then
Speaker 1: it it'll synchronize up again and then you can have access. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is something that has been done already. Security experts
Speaker 1: have shown. There's one in particular who used his own
Speaker 1: vehicle to demonstrate that you could gain access, but it
Speaker 1: could take hours and it takes a huge amount of effort,
Speaker 1: so it's not something that is is probably easier to
Speaker 1: just get a brick and bash the window. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely not likely to happen, right, I get like the
Speaker 1: likelihood of it happening is incredibly low because there are
Speaker 1: other ways of getting access to a vehicle that require
Speaker 1: far less work and far less access to set vehicle
Speaker 1: for a given length of time. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more of this classic episode of tech stuff after this
Speaker 1: quick break. There are other examples of someone having a
Speaker 1: remote control of a vehicle, but was it was by
Speaker 1: exploiting a system that was intended to have this remote
Speaker 1: shutdown feature. So you you know that a lot of
Speaker 1: vehicles have this ability for for a an entity to
Speaker 1: either remotely shut down the engine or do things like
Speaker 1: hawk the horn, right, yeah, I think, uh, well, I
Speaker 1: know one scenario in which this occurs would be like,
Speaker 1: so let's say you take out a loan on a
Speaker 1: car and the person who sells you the car is
Speaker 1: not very confident that you will pay back that loan.
Speaker 1: They can put equipment on the car that prevents it
Speaker 1: from starting up, right, so they can say, this person
Speaker 1: isn't paying on their financing, we need to shut down
Speaker 1: the car's ability to run. Yeah, it's essentially a remote
Speaker 1: kill switch, and your car will not start at that point.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, it could be hopefully they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to turn off the engine while you're driving. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's that's a possibility, but they could
Speaker 1: certainly do it, you know, so that the next time
Speaker 1: you try to start up your car it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And uh, it can be used in that case where
Speaker 1: someone's not keeping up with their payments. It can also
Speaker 1: be used in the case of a stolen car. So
Speaker 1: if your car stolen, you report it to the police.
Speaker 1: You work with the dealership, you explain, hey, my vehicle
Speaker 1: was stolen, they can actually activate this remote kill switch
Speaker 1: so that the criminals who have possession of your car
Speaker 1: are no longer able to drive it, and then the
Speaker 1: police can hopefully locate your vehicle and you get it back,
Speaker 1: uh Right. So there are legitimate reasons why you would
Speaker 1: want that technology install on your vehicle. However, there was
Speaker 1: at least one case where a person who had access
Speaker 1: to said system uh accessed it for personal reasons and
Speaker 1: out of vindictiveness, was essentially harassing somebody using the system
Speaker 1: to mess with their vehicle. So if you look at
Speaker 1: a discussions about car hacking and they always say, like,
Speaker 1: what are the examples of malicious car hacking, they said, well,
Speaker 1: outside of research and development, where where security researchers are
Speaker 1: trying their best to do this to see if it's viable,
Speaker 1: there's only one example of it ever actually happening. And
Speaker 1: in that case, it wasn't hacking in the sense of
Speaker 1: someone setting down at their computer and trying to get
Speaker 1: access to a vehicle, someone exploiting an existing system that
Speaker 1: was already attached to that vehicle. But that being said,
Speaker 1: with all those caveats laid out the issue of wireless
Speaker 1: hacking a vehicle of remotely accessing a vehicle is by
Speaker 1: no means a dead issue. It is something that is
Speaker 1: continuously brought up, and as of the time that we're
Speaker 1: recording this podcast, which is in May of twenty, there's
Speaker 1: increasing interest in this because of a pair of researchers
Speaker 1: and what they claim they are able to do and
Speaker 1: what they will show off at the black Hat Conference
Speaker 1: in August. What is that? Well, first I should explain
Speaker 1: what the black Hat Conference is, So it's a um
Speaker 1: it's essentially it's a hacker convention. It's all about discussing
Speaker 1: security vulnerabilities and uh the ways to exploit them. Now,
Speaker 1: in hacker circles, you have white hats and black hats,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you can argue gray hats. White hat hackers
Speaker 1: are people who are looking for security vulnerabilities with the
Speaker 1: intent to have those security vulnerabilities patched so that they
Speaker 1: are no longer vulnerable. Black hat hackers UH tend to
Speaker 1: be the folks who find security vulnerabilities in order to
Speaker 1: exploit them, whether that is to exploit them directly or
Speaker 1: to exploit them by selling that information to other interested parties,
Speaker 1: and whether they're doing it for cash or for leverage
Speaker 1: over somebody, or just for fun, Yeah, just to build
Speaker 1: their own reputation, as opposed to, you know, a genuine
Speaker 1: desire to help other folks. So even though it's called
Speaker 1: the black Hat Conference, it doesn't necessarily mean that these
Speaker 1: are all people who are gathering around trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to control the world through their laptops. Often
Speaker 1: its actual discussions about these are serious concerns that we
Speaker 1: need to address in order to make sure that they
Speaker 1: don't become huge problems go beyond concern to an enormous problem.
Speaker 1: So the the researchers were talking about actually, I think
Speaker 1: Ben and I mentioned them to Charlie Miller and Chris
Speaker 1: valisek Uh, their two security experts who had talked about
Speaker 1: hacking cars previously. They had uh shown in two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen and two thousand and fourteen various ways to hack
Speaker 1: vehicles UH, and now they are talking that in the
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen conference in August they will reveal a
Speaker 1: way of remotely gaining access to a vehicle. It does
Speaker 1: not require you to plug a laptop into a computer.
Speaker 1: They say that you could do this with an unmodified
Speaker 1: vehicle as soon as it rolls off the dealership. Scary,
Speaker 1: very scary. Um, that's an excellent question. I think that
Speaker 1: I'm sure that they have something. The extent of that, yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the extent of what they have I do not know. Now. Previously,
Speaker 1: they have published lists of vehicles that they have looked
Speaker 1: at that they say represent, you know, the most hackable
Speaker 1: kind of vehicles, and the very top of the list,
Speaker 1: where the Jeep Cherokee was number one. That's the most table,
Speaker 1: most tackable, most tackical. But they they had identify three
Speaker 1: different criteria for hackability, including things like are the systems
Speaker 1: interconnected with one with one another? How many wireless points
Speaker 1: of entry are are potentially there? That sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: And out of the various criteria, the Jeep Cherokee had
Speaker 1: the most of them, the most examples. Uh, the Infinity
Speaker 1: Q fifty was also up there in the Cattle I
Speaker 1: Escalade as ah as the the SNL Southern character would say,
Speaker 1: was also up there. And uh, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: wireless points of vulnerability, really you're talking about any system
Speaker 1: that has that wireless communication capability. So one example, which
Speaker 1: is perfectly innocent in of itself, is the tire monitoring
Speaker 1: system the tire pressure monitoring system. So if you have
Speaker 1: a vehicle that has this, then like you get in
Speaker 1: your car, you turn your you know, you put the
Speaker 1: key in the ignition you or if it's key less ignition,
Speaker 1: you turn on your car, however that may be. And
Speaker 1: there might be an indicator on your dashboard that tells you,
Speaker 1: you know, if your tires are overinflated, underinflated, what the
Speaker 1: you know, how the pressure is? Uh, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. You're like, oh, awesome, I don't need to
Speaker 1: get out of my vehicle, you know, pull over to
Speaker 1: a gas station or whatever and get the air pressure
Speaker 1: gauge out and see how it's doing. It's telling me
Speaker 1: right here, um, which is useful. But it's doing so
Speaker 1: with wireless sensors that communicate back to the the computer
Speaker 1: system that is governing all the other systems in the car. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can see why you wouldn't want wires going to
Speaker 1: the tires. Yeah, yeah, no, it would It would be problematic, right.
Speaker 1: So the the wireless system is likely communicating with the
Speaker 1: what was called the controller area network bus or can bus,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like the the traffic controller of
Speaker 1: all the different systems that feed information into the car's
Speaker 1: computer the master control program. Yeah, if not the master
Speaker 1: control program, it's got to be like the master control programs.
Speaker 1: Uh executive assistant, Right, yeah, yeah, it's a it's good
Speaker 1: old David uh not Yeah, Stark controlling this. So yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's this this traffic controller that sends the information
Speaker 1: to the computer. Well, you know, that's a potential point
Speaker 1: of vulnerability. And there have been example of being able
Speaker 1: to track a vehicle based upon tracking the unique monitoring
Speaker 1: frequency for that that tire pressure system. So you could
Speaker 1: potentially track where a vehicle has gone by keeping note
Speaker 1: of this particular this particular wireless communication system. If you could,
Speaker 1: can you get access to more critical systems like breaking
Speaker 1: or steering through that? That remains to be seen. So
Speaker 1: Miller and uh and Valask have said that they have
Speaker 1: found some interesting stuff through their experiments. Um, they haven't
Speaker 1: had this discussion, so we can't say exactly what they revealed,
Speaker 1: but they have said that UH or at least the
Speaker 1: black Hat website says that the presentation will include starting
Speaker 1: with remote exploitation, we will show how to pivot through
Speaker 1: different pieces of the vehicle's hardware in order to be
Speaker 1: able to send messages on the can bus to critical
Speaker 1: electronic control units e c U s. We will conclude
Speaker 1: by showing several can messages that affect physical systems of
Speaker 1: the vehicle. So that that's pretty vague, right. It doesn't
Speaker 1: specifically say that it could do something like break the
Speaker 1: car as it b R a k E the car,
Speaker 1: like apply the brakes. Doesn't say that, uh, you know, explicitly,
Speaker 1: so maybe their methodology will be limited. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they say that they plan on showing both the reality
Speaker 1: and the limitations of remote hacking on vehicles. So a
Speaker 1: lot of security experts have said, listen, this is something
Speaker 1: to be concerned about, yes, but not something to panic
Speaker 1: over because one, they have not indicated how extensive these
Speaker 1: these messages can go, like what what the effects can be. Two,
Speaker 1: they haven't discussed their methodology of coming up with the ability,
Speaker 1: the way of doing it, or if whether or not
Speaker 1: they plan on sharing in detail how it's done. And three,
Speaker 1: it may require so much effort to do this that,
Speaker 1: just like the keyless entry, no one would ever bother
Speaker 1: to do it, because they are easier ways to sabotage
Speaker 1: a vehicle than going through these processes but showing that
Speaker 1: it's possible means that further like the future generations of
Speaker 1: vehicles could be built and designed to counteract this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff from the from the get go, so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't become attempting enough target to make further investigation
Speaker 1: into that that line of attack. Right, Like, if you
Speaker 1: if you find a vulnerability and you find a really
Speaker 1: hard way that you can exploit that vulnerability, that might
Speaker 1: lead to other people saying maybe I can find an
Speaker 1: easier way to exploit that same vulnerability. As long as
Speaker 1: that vulnerability exists, it's a it's a target, and if
Speaker 1: we ever get to a point where it's easier to
Speaker 1: attack the target than other methods of messing with a vehicle,
Speaker 1: then you're in trouble. So the hope is that these
Speaker 1: systems one could be addressed by updating firmware on existing vehicles,
Speaker 1: and two could be prevented in future vehicle design. Uh.
Speaker 1: That being said, of course, we still don't know what
Speaker 1: they're gonna say yet. It may it may be that
Speaker 1: this is all uh, you know, largely, you know, the
Speaker 1: speculation that we're having is largely harmless. That could be
Speaker 1: that's best case scenario. Worst case would be, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: figured out that we could with a laptop and a
Speaker 1: wireless transmitter, we can make your card do whatever we
Speaker 1: wanted to do. That would be bad. Well, I would say, actually,
Speaker 1: the best case scenario would be that, um, that they
Speaker 1: actually do turn up whatever are the most critical vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: that exist, and that leads manufact trurers to take better
Speaker 1: steps to protect their cars. Yeah, assuming that there are
Speaker 1: in fact critical vulnerabilities, that is the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: The true best case scenario is to discover there are
Speaker 1: no critical vulnerabilities. But the likelihood of that, I mean,
Speaker 1: if someone's really determined to get access to a system,
Speaker 1: there hasn't been a system made that is crack proof.
Speaker 1: You know, eventually, given enough time, resources and willpower, any
Speaker 1: system that has been made can will eventually be be breached.
Speaker 1: Speak for yourself. I'm behind seven proxies. I tracked him
Speaker 1: all the all the way to a pub in Ireland.
Speaker 1: It turned out he was at least three more hops away.
Speaker 1: We've got more to say in this classic episode of
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Speaker 1: is Yeah. About the only thing I could imagine scarier
Speaker 1: than that is somebody hacking the airplane you're writing in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would that is a a sobering thought right now.
Speaker 1: Of course, we would hope that nothing like that is possible,
Speaker 1: That airplanes are designed to be as secure as possible,
Speaker 1: and that they don't really have any vulnerabilities that you
Speaker 1: could exploit, like like these, you know, tire pressure gauges
Speaker 1: or anything like that. We would hope, but that might
Speaker 1: not necessarily be the case, because this month, in May,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen yet, some media outlets have been
Speaker 1: reporting that a security researcher named Chris Roberts may have
Speaker 1: hacked an airplane and sent it off course. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason why you're building so many qualifiers into this
Speaker 1: statement is because, as a turns out, there's there are
Speaker 1: a lot of differing accounts about what exactly was done
Speaker 1: and or happened. Yeah, well, our information is a kind
Speaker 1: of like he said, he said, he said issue. So
Speaker 1: I'll explain that as we go forward. But who is
Speaker 1: Chris Roberts. So for years he has been known as
Speaker 1: a white hat hacker. We talked about black hats and
Speaker 1: white hats earlier. If you're a listener to the show,
Speaker 1: you're probably familiar anyway. But the white hat is somebody who,
Speaker 1: at least ostensibly uh goes out and looks for vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: and systems in order to improve security, to show you, hey,
Speaker 1: here's where you're weak. You should shore up your defenses
Speaker 1: in this area. And so Roberts for years has been
Speaker 1: known as a white hat hacker, especially in a vionic
Speaker 1: sort of publicly denouncing alleged security problems and vulnerabilities in
Speaker 1: networks airline manufacturers put into their aircraft. So keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that, you know, as the aircraft experience has a
Speaker 1: al it over time, Roberts would argue, it has introduced
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities from an electronic standpoint computer standpoint, So things like
Speaker 1: the in flight entertainment systems, the i f E s,
Speaker 1: or the fact that a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: airlines offer WiFi on their flights. Yeah, that these could
Speaker 1: potentially be vulnerabilities. Yeah, And so you know, you would
Speaker 1: just hope that, well, I mean, if a plane's showing
Speaker 1: me movies on some central computer system, surely that computer
Speaker 1: is not linked to the computers that control things like
Speaker 1: I don't know, life support systems inside the airplane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the engine, the navigating computer. You would hope that
Speaker 1: there's no involvement there. But I'm gonna tell a little story. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in April, I think it was on April fifteen,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the middle of April. Yeah, Roberts, the same guy,
Speaker 1: Chris Roberts. He was removed from a fly by FBI
Speaker 1: agents after the flight landed in Syracuse, New York. And
Speaker 1: the supposed reason that everybody figured this happened was because
Speaker 1: Roberts had tweeted a joke about hacking an airplane in
Speaker 1: which he was riding earlier that day, and has at
Speaker 1: least on one subsequent occasion said he was essentially poking
Speaker 1: the bear. Yeah, so the tweet read as follows, find
Speaker 1: myself on a seven hundred. Let's see box I F
Speaker 1: E ice dot com. Shall we start playing with E
Speaker 1: I C A S messages pass oxygen on anyone smiley face.
Speaker 1: So he's using some some acronyms there. One of them
Speaker 1: is I F E that's in flight entertainment. Another one
Speaker 1: is E I C A S that's Engine indicating and
Speaker 1: crew alerting system. At the past oxygen on. What it
Speaker 1: seems to be saying there is he's suggesting it would
Speaker 1: be funny to to trigger a command that makes the
Speaker 1: oxygen masks descend on all the passengers, whereupon you would
Speaker 1: adjust your own mask before helping others. Yes, that's important
Speaker 1: to remember. Now. Of course, it's important to point out
Speaker 1: that Roberts did not do anything. He was just tweeting
Speaker 1: a joke. Right. Still, one could and probably has, argued
Speaker 1: that such a joke was at best in poor taste
Speaker 1: and at worst, really dumb. Yeah, well, especially because the
Speaker 1: FBI acted on it. The FBI agents detained him, interrogated him,
Speaker 1: and confiscated his electronics. He even tweeted out a picture
Speaker 1: of the electronics that were confiscated and said, well they're
Speaker 1: all encrypted, but they're all gone now. Yeah. So that
Speaker 1: was last month in April. But in May of a
Speaker 1: Canadian news organization published I guess what must have been
Speaker 1: a leaked copy um of a warrant application for the
Speaker 1: search and seizure of Robert's devices. This was itt up
Speaker 1: by FBI special Agent Mark Hurley. According to this document,
Speaker 1: Roberts had already voluntarily spoken with the FBI in February
Speaker 1: and March of so a few months ago to inform
Speaker 1: them about basically what he claimed were security vulnerabilities in
Speaker 1: these in flight entertainment systems that we were talking about before.
Speaker 1: And he identified several aircraft in particular the Boeing seven hundred,
Speaker 1: the seven thirty seven, nine hundred, seven fifty seven, two hundred,
Speaker 1: and the Airbus A three twenty. Now, if you'll notice,
Speaker 1: he identified in his tweet that he was on A
Speaker 1: seven hundred, one of the ones that had these in
Speaker 1: flight entertainment system vulnerabilities according to him, and so that's
Speaker 1: sort of the joke he was making. He was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: remember these things I've been talking about. I'm on one
Speaker 1: of these planes now. So the document, the warrant application,
Speaker 1: claims that Roberts told FBI agents on these earlier conversations
Speaker 1: that he had exploited these security flaws and penetrated in
Speaker 1: flight entertainment networks in midflight. So he claims between he
Speaker 1: penetrated i FE systems fifteen to twenty times, and he
Speaker 1: said he gained access to these i FE systems by
Speaker 1: physically plugging in. I thought this was interesting. So he
Speaker 1: said he physically plugged in via a modified Cat six
Speaker 1: Ethernet cable into the seat electronics box or SEB, and
Speaker 1: these are found under the seats in some airplanes, so
Speaker 1: you can imagine his process. Basically, what he said he
Speaker 1: did is he reach under the seat in front of
Speaker 1: him and sort of wiggle this box and squeeze it
Speaker 1: until the cover comes off, which is quite the feat
Speaker 1: because many of these are fixed by screws. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll go into we'll go into potential object actions to
Speaker 1: the story. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah. So I've never
Speaker 1: tried to get into a seat electronic s box myself,
Speaker 1: have I, nor will I, and nor should you, because
Speaker 1: it's not a good thing to try to mess with.
Speaker 1: But what he said is he got the cover off
Speaker 1: and he'd plug in. It's kind of strange that nobody
Speaker 1: ever seemed to like notice him doing this. One of
Speaker 1: the sections to the story. Yeah, but uh so, and again,
Speaker 1: just to reiterate, this is what the warrant application claims
Speaker 1: he told the FBI earlier this year. So it's several
Speaker 1: levels of hearsay, um, but yeah, they said he so,
Speaker 1: he said he would plug in with this Cat six
Speaker 1: Ethernet cable and that would give him access to the
Speaker 1: plane's i FE system, the inflight entertainment one. And then
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read just a direct quote from
Speaker 1: the warrant application and this next part. It claims that
Speaker 1: Roberts told them he quote connected to other systems on
Speaker 1: the airplane network after he exploited slash, gained access to,
Speaker 1: or quote hacked the i f A system. He stated
Speaker 1: that he then overwrote code on the airplane's thrust management
Speaker 1: computer while a board of flight. He stated that he
Speaker 1: successfully commanded the system. He had accessed to issue the
Speaker 1: CLB or climb command. He stated that he thereby caused
Speaker 1: one of the airplane engines to climb, resulting in a
Speaker 1: lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of
Speaker 1: these flights. He also stated that he used Vortex software
Speaker 1: after compromising, slash, exploiting, or quote hacking the airplane's networks.
Speaker 1: He used the software to monitor traffic from the cockpit
Speaker 1: system and if true, this is fascinating. The warrant application
Speaker 1: claims Robert said he used default I D s and
Speaker 1: passwords to compromise the network. That was a face palm there.
Speaker 1: If that's true, people change your passwords? Well, I mean, okay, here,
Speaker 1: here's here's one thing I would argue as far as
Speaker 1: the changing of the passwords is yes, as it should
Speaker 1: not be default. At the same time, this is a
Speaker 1: difficult UH scenario because you have multiple flight crews all
Speaker 1: using the same equipment. So how do you do I
Speaker 1: D password management in that case? Like assuming that assuming
Speaker 1: that the idea and password is is unique to the vehicle,
Speaker 1: to the aircraft, and not unique to the crew. So
Speaker 1: if if it's unique to the crew, that's one thing,
Speaker 1: you know, Like if it's if it's the pilot and
Speaker 1: copilot who have to put in this I D and password,
Speaker 1: and it's the same for whichever aircraft are in. That's
Speaker 1: one thing. But I suspect that's not the case. I
Speaker 1: suspect it's more unique to the aircraft. That's more. That's tricky.
Speaker 1: How do you where do you record the information for
Speaker 1: the aircraft so that the crew has access to it? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I don't know, but you
Speaker 1: can do better than default. I'm sure, I'm sure, And
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to this question. And I
Speaker 1: mean I would hesitate to ask because I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't need to know. As long as I know
Speaker 1: that they are practicing good security measures, as long as
Speaker 1: they're not doing the default IDE and password. Uh, then
Speaker 1: whatever you know, I'm maybe uh. And then of course
Speaker 1: he claimed he after this that he used a virtual
Speaker 1: environment to build a virtual version of the airplane's network
Speaker 1: that he could then study safely and so to to
Speaker 1: reiterate this, he, according to the FBI document, Roberts claimed
Speaker 1: he steered an airplane, he plugged into an airplane from
Speaker 1: a passenger seat, and caused the airplane to briefly divert
Speaker 1: off course, that's amazing and amazingly scary if true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is that is incredibly sobering if in fact
Speaker 1: it is true. Now, there are some things to consider,
Speaker 1: and we'll get fully into some questions about this story
Speaker 1: later on. One of the things is that I think
Speaker 1: there might be some confusion online in reaction to this story,
Speaker 1: where one of the things is that Roberts was not
Speaker 1: claiming that he did this on the day he was arrested.
Speaker 1: The warrant application is saying that he told them he
Speaker 1: had done this in previous years. Yeah, and they just
Speaker 1: got around to arresting him later. Yeah. Well, I think
Speaker 1: they got around to arresting him because of this tweet
Speaker 1: and then because they suspected that he had been messing
Speaker 1: with the flight he was on that day and in April,
Speaker 1: even though he claims I think he claims that he
Speaker 1: didn't mess with it that day. Yeah, And so there's
Speaker 1: there was I believe there was. Part of the the
Speaker 1: accusation was that the this this electronics box, the seat
Speaker 1: the SEV had been altered, but Robert says, well I didn't,
Speaker 1: that wasn't me. Yeah. Yeah, So the FBI claimed it
Speaker 1: showed signs of TA bring the seat, the one under
Speaker 1: the seat in front of him on the flight he'd
Speaker 1: been on that day looked like it had it had
Speaker 1: been tampered with, but he claimed he didn't do it.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know what to say about that,
Speaker 1: except that another interesting question that comes out of this
Speaker 1: is about the nature of white hat hacking. Right, So, like,
Speaker 1: if you take this story at face value and just say,
Speaker 1: let's assume it's true, and you are a white hat
Speaker 1: hacker who is aware of a very dangerous, very scary
Speaker 1: security vulnerability, whether it's in a vehicle or a piece
Speaker 1: of software on the internet infrastructure, whatever, it may be,
Speaker 1: something that that could really endanger a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and you're aware of how to exploit it, and you
Speaker 1: know that other people could exploit it, and you've been
Speaker 1: trying to warn people about it but getting nowhere. But
Speaker 1: but it's not getting fixed. What do you do? And
Speaker 1: so I know a lot of people would look at
Speaker 1: what he did here, if he in fact did do it,
Speaker 1: and they would say that that's so reckless. How could
Speaker 1: you gamble with the lives of all the people on
Speaker 1: that plane just to sort of like prove something for
Speaker 1: a little research project. On the other hand, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you could argue that well, you know, he
Speaker 1: didn't tell it to like crash into the ground. He
Speaker 1: you know, maybe executed something that it would have seemed
Speaker 1: to him to be an innocuous test. I don't know. Again,
Speaker 1: we have to say, again, this is all sort of
Speaker 1: hypothetical because we don't know what really happen. We don't
Speaker 1: know the real story. Yeah, so a lot of this
Speaker 1: depends upon what really happened, Right, So I think anything
Speaker 1: that would that results in the diverting at all from
Speaker 1: a flight plan is incredibly reckless, even if even if
Speaker 1: it's too demonstrate, Hey, you really need to pay attention
Speaker 1: to me, these vulnerabilities exist. I think that's it taking
Speaker 1: taking that approach where you are potentially putting the lives
Speaker 1: of everyone on board that flight, not just yourself. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it were just yourself and you were just proving it,
Speaker 1: then that's one thing. But you are taking You're taking
Speaker 1: it's an incredible amount of bravado to say I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put the lives of every single person on this plane
Speaker 1: in danger. I am potentially going to uh to to
Speaker 1: eliminate the lives of everyone here and forever alter the
Speaker 1: lives of all of their loved ones like that, not
Speaker 1: to mention potentially the lives of people on the ground
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, it's just incredible. Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, you could also make
Speaker 1: the argument, like, with this security vulnerability in place and
Speaker 1: them not doing anything to fix it, that are already
Speaker 1: in danger and you're trying to get something done, the
Speaker 1: best I could say is that there has to be
Speaker 1: some means of getting that message across without physically altering
Speaker 1: the pathway of the aircraft, Like you could send a
Speaker 1: message some other way, or you could document what you
Speaker 1: are doing and send that documentation on and say, look,
Speaker 1: this is exactly how it works. If I can do it,
Speaker 1: then potentially other people can do it. And that's why
Speaker 1: you need to address the security vulnerability. I think. I
Speaker 1: think there are other ways that would have gotten just
Speaker 1: as much attention from an official standpoint without potentially harming people.
Speaker 1: Assuming that the story that we hear in the affidavit
Speaker 1: is in fact what happened. Yeah, and so now we
Speaker 1: really do need to get to that point what really happened,
Speaker 1: because there are people who have raised serious concerns about
Speaker 1: the version of this story that's come out, and it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to identify if if it's not true, where
Speaker 1: the fault lies. Was there a problem with the FBI?
Speaker 1: Is retelling of of Robert's supposed story? Did Robert's mislead
Speaker 1: the FBI? Did the FBI not understand what he was
Speaker 1: telling them or did? Or were they misleading in their report?
Speaker 1: But there are places along the line where we could
Speaker 1: have gotten the wrong story from this document. Stay tuned
Speaker 1: for the exciting conclusion of this tex Stuff classic episode
Speaker 1: right after we take this break. So, no matter where
Speaker 1: the fault may lie, there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have pointed out problems with the story. So
Speaker 1: whether it was the original Roberts story or was the retelling,
Speaker 1: that's kind of beside the point. Here are some of
Speaker 1: the objections. One of the big ones is one that
Speaker 1: we've raised already, the idea that if it requires plugging
Speaker 1: a modified cable into an electronic box that typically is
Speaker 1: not accessible by a passenger, why didn't anyone else notice
Speaker 1: or comment on it? Or you know, because again, and
Speaker 1: it requires some manipulation of the box to get access
Speaker 1: to it, even According to the affidavit story of what
Speaker 1: Roberts was saying, um, and a lot of these do
Speaker 1: have screws that are set in, so you would have
Speaker 1: to unscrew a a a panel in order to get
Speaker 1: access to the ports that are inside of it. Why
Speaker 1: would no other pastor or flight attendant have noticed this
Speaker 1: because it's it's you know, it's fairly disruptive. On one hand,
Speaker 1: I agree with that, but then there's a little part
Speaker 1: of my brain that says, yeah, but what's the easiest
Speaker 1: way to rob a bank? Show up and look like
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing. Just walk into the vault
Speaker 1: like you're somebody who's supposed to be going in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a certain thing to be said for
Speaker 1: if you just don't act like you're doing anything shady,
Speaker 1: but you've got this sort of like aura of yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I normally do. People just don't really
Speaker 1: question it. They're like, Okay, I assume me knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Well, and I suppose if if someone saying
Speaker 1: next to that person just assumes that what they're doing
Speaker 1: is plugging in a device to charge. Because some a
Speaker 1: lot of aircraft now have you know, outlets for that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Maybe that's the assumption. I still think
Speaker 1: that flight attendants would find it interesting, but maybe. But
Speaker 1: let's let's all right, let's go ahead and say that
Speaker 1: that's one of the objections. But the other one is
Speaker 1: that you have to you know this. This also assumes
Speaker 1: that the i FE is in fact an interconnected network
Speaker 1: with the same computers that control the flight controls, and
Speaker 1: not two separate networks that have limited or no connectivity. Right.
Speaker 1: So this is the objection that I really hope is correct.
Speaker 1: And the objection is the airplanes do not actually have
Speaker 1: this vulnerability, right, Like, he couldn't have done what he
Speaker 1: said because it's not possible. Yeah, Now, there are some
Speaker 1: connections that have to be there for most of these
Speaker 1: i FE systems, because if you've ever been on one
Speaker 1: where you have the track my flight, then obviously the
Speaker 1: track my flight uh app or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it in the entertainment system, that feature is gaining
Speaker 1: some information from various systems aboard the aircraft, uh you know,
Speaker 1: things like altitude and air speed and the temperature outside
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. Um, how how far are
Speaker 1: you from your point of origin? How far are you
Speaker 1: from your destination? But all that being said, that could
Speaker 1: totally be connected to computer systems that have no other
Speaker 1: connection to anything else. Right, Like, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of redundant systems aboard aircraft for very good reason. You
Speaker 1: want there to be redundantcy for safety. So and it
Speaker 1: could also be that the information that's coming across is
Speaker 1: again traveling in a very specific one way path that
Speaker 1: there's no way to go upstream of that information. Um,
Speaker 1: and that would make the most sense. In fact, Boeing
Speaker 1: says the connections are limited and offer no access to
Speaker 1: flight controls through the i f E. UH, and that
Speaker 1: means that you wouldn't be able to get access to
Speaker 1: this thrust management control using the i f It would
Speaker 1: be impossible. So you know, you might be able to
Speaker 1: hack the i FE and get access to it and
Speaker 1: maybe require everyone to watch biodome, but you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: be able to terrible. It would be awful, yeah, but
Speaker 1: not as awful as having someone altered the flight path plan. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been some folks who said it's it might
Speaker 1: be possible that the i f E has a direct
Speaker 1: connection to climate control, which matters, Yeah, because if it's
Speaker 1: on the same system as climate control, and you shut
Speaker 1: down climate control, then you're going to force that aircraft
Speaker 1: to land. Uh. I don't know how much access to
Speaker 1: climate control the typical i F has. It may only
Speaker 1: have access to vent control, even your vent is on
Speaker 1: or off and that's it. It may not have any
Speaker 1: access to the actual climate control part. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But if it does have access to climate control, that
Speaker 1: could potentially be a point of vulnerability that could be
Speaker 1: exploited to force an aircraft to land prematurely, um most
Speaker 1: likely flying to the closest airport that has availability and landing.
Speaker 1: So it's not like it's not like, you know, a
Speaker 1: drastic emergency, but it would require premature landing, which obviously
Speaker 1: would be problematic at best. Yeah. I also remember seeing
Speaker 1: one criticism of the story that that essentially said that
Speaker 1: pilots would have to review any kind of like review
Speaker 1: and approved any incoming change to the flight path or
Speaker 1: flight control. Yeah, that's the aircraft systems are designed for safety.
Speaker 1: And again that redundancy is meant for not just the systems,
Speaker 1: but for commands given to the system so that you know,
Speaker 1: think of any computer program where you've had, you know,
Speaker 1: something where you you choose a command and it pops
Speaker 1: up and says are you sure, and you hit okay.
Speaker 1: Multiply that by a hundred, and that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about aircraft systems for good reason that that you know,
Speaker 1: you are meant to review and approve these things, so
Speaker 1: that anything that would affect a key element of the
Speaker 1: aircraft's operation would require approval, review, and approval, and not
Speaker 1: just a command issued by a computer. So that's another objection. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also a Mashable has an article on this. They
Speaker 1: interviewed a pilot. The pilot requested to remain anonymous in
Speaker 1: the interview, so we don't I trust that it's really
Speaker 1: a pilot. I do too. So the pilot said that
Speaker 1: Robert's claims, according to what the FBI said, at any rate,
Speaker 1: we're false because the systems he had claimed to access
Speaker 1: didn't exist aboard the type of aircraft he was on. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: this might have just been been uh limited to the
Speaker 1: seven story, and it could be that it was a
Speaker 1: different aircraft that he claimed he had gained access to,
Speaker 1: but he said, the pilot says, if Roberts is saying
Speaker 1: he was hundred when he did this, it's impossible because
Speaker 1: the system he claims to have taken advantage of, can't
Speaker 1: do that. He also points out the eye cast system
Speaker 1: you were talking about earlier, that that just displays messages.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have any control over the aircraft at all.
Speaker 1: All it does is tell you stuff. It's a redoubt essentially.
Speaker 1: Ah and be like trying to compromise a computer by
Speaker 1: issuing print commands. Yeah, yeah, you might be able to
Speaker 1: print some naughty words out, but it's not It's not
Speaker 1: affecting any other part of the computer. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: he also pointed out that the I f E and
Speaker 1: cockpit systems had no point of commonality except for the
Speaker 1: fact that they both drew power from the same power source.
Speaker 1: But that's it. They didn't have any crossover. There was
Speaker 1: no connectivity between the two. So it is entirely possible
Speaker 1: that the this is a big fuss over over largely nothing. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean I certainly hope so yeah, but also
Speaker 1: hope no matter what the true facts of this case,
Speaker 1: where I hope this is at least encouraging airline manufacturers
Speaker 1: and the people who design their their hardware and software
Speaker 1: to re examine the security of their aircraft. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and really put it through vigorous testing. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that they don't already do that. I
Speaker 1: imagine that these companies, I mean, obviously they have a
Speaker 1: vested interest in making sure those those systems are tested
Speaker 1: vigorously with lots of different attempts at intrusion. The various
Speaker 1: scenarios have to be run about how likely or possible
Speaker 1: is this? Because I mean, it's it's it's life and death,
Speaker 1: and a company has to be able to rely upon
Speaker 1: having the reputation of being responsible for something as important
Speaker 1: and potentially as dangerous as air travel. Um So I
Speaker 1: I'm fairly confident that that the security vulnerabilities are very
Speaker 1: seriously looked at in these cases. Whether the Roberts case
Speaker 1: is as extreme as has been indicated in that affidavit,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, if that is a possibility,
Speaker 1: then that's certainly warrants a re examination of how these
Speaker 1: network systems are laid out within an aircraft. Now let
Speaker 1: me do let me tell you something. This is background
Speaker 1: on Jonathan Way. Before I worked for How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: years before I had worked for uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: worked for a couple of consulting firms. Is before that,
Speaker 1: this is way back when I was looking for my
Speaker 1: first job. I landed some contract work with an airline
Speaker 1: and my job was to transcribe audio files that were
Speaker 1: detailing the various systems aboard aircraft into text files so
Speaker 1: that there'll be a text copy of these audios. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, they didn't have the manuals or
Speaker 1: the hard copy anywhere. So it's my job to transcribe
Speaker 1: hours of technical documentation about these aircraft, which included things
Speaker 1: like how the cables were laid out in the systems,
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating to learn at the time. It
Speaker 1: was nothing you know, that was exploitable or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was just interesting. But it really displayed to me
Speaker 1: the care that goes into designing these systems to make
Speaker 1: certain that this redundancy is there, and it actually it
Speaker 1: really reassured me quite a bit while I was doing this,
Speaker 1: like it removes some of the the mystery behind aircraft,
Speaker 1: and also displayed exactly how incredibly um detail oriented these
Speaker 1: designers had to be, which you know, makes sense if
Speaker 1: you think about it for more than a second you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: of course they have to be. But it really drove
Speaker 1: that home. So I was very thankful to actually have
Speaker 1: that experience. It's one that not a lot of people
Speaker 1: have necessarily had. Now. I will also say that it
Speaker 1: was for a lot of old aircraft that aren't around anymore,
Speaker 1: because this was many years ago, and those aircraft have
Speaker 1: since been retired from various fleets. But I think there's
Speaker 1: old aircraft still in circulation. Yeah, but you don't see
Speaker 1: a whole lot of these gigantic old war horses. They've
Speaker 1: been they've been replaced by newer more. Um. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, back back when uh an aircraft consisted of
Speaker 1: a giant rubber band and a lot of hope. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that. But one other thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to point out, kind of going back to the car
Speaker 1: discussion just briefly, is that whether or not these concerns
Speaker 1: are critical, like whether or not these are things that
Speaker 1: we really need to worry about. Most most security experts
Speaker 1: say right now, the trouble you'd have to go through
Speaker 1: in order to exploit any of these so called vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: would be so great as to render the meaningless. That
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter, because there's been so much public interest
Speaker 1: shown on the story for obvious reasons. That is it
Speaker 1: has prompted politicians to get involved, and Congressman Ed Markey
Speaker 1: sent out a letter to twenty automakers after the two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen black Hat conference that that are earlier one
Speaker 1: where uh they were demonstrating the ability to hack vehicles
Speaker 1: by directly hooking up computers to the diagnostic system UM
Speaker 1: and he sent these letter to twenty automakers to ask
Speaker 1: about their security measures for wireless attacks. Now, all of
Speaker 1: the automakers that responded, and I think sixteen of twenty
Speaker 1: cent responses something like that, but all of the response
Speaker 1: the ones that responded said their vehicles had wireless points
Speaker 1: of access, so at least one wireless point of access
Speaker 1: that could potentially be used to connect to the car,
Speaker 1: not necessarily exploit a vulnerability, but to connect. Seven of
Speaker 1: the respondents said that they used a third party to
Speaker 1: test their systems for security vulnerabilities, So essentially white hat hackers.
Speaker 1: They went outside their own company to hire contractors and say,
Speaker 1: see if you can gain wireless access were mode access
Speaker 1: to these security systems, and if you can or these
Speaker 1: these what are supposed to be secured systems, and if
Speaker 1: you can, let us know how you did it. So
Speaker 1: we can address that before we release the vehicle as
Speaker 1: a production model. Very responsible, But only two said that
Speaker 1: their vehicles had countermeasures for hacking attacks on stuff like
Speaker 1: breaking and steering systems. So the story that gets out
Speaker 1: from this is that you know, only a couple of
Speaker 1: car manufacturers when they weren't named, actually have the security
Speaker 1: measures in place, and only seven are using third parties
Speaker 1: to test their systems. The flip side of that argument
Speaker 1: could be there's no demonstrable security issue yet that that
Speaker 1: would be enough to create a concern. However, it is
Speaker 1: good to be aware of it and to perhaps start
Speaker 1: building in these kind of safety features moving forward, knowing
Speaker 1: that it's not like the world's going to get less connected, right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna continue to see that trend go, so we
Speaker 1: need to be certain that we're doing so in a
Speaker 1: responsible way, in a safe way. Totally excellent. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you agree. So, yeah, this was This was a fun
Speaker 1: kind of thing to look at, and I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: I would always argue, apply critical thinking to the situation.
Speaker 1: Don't react with your initial emotional reaction. I mean, anyone
Speaker 1: who sees anything like this, I'm sure the first emotional
Speaker 1: reaction is a fear, a feeling of unease, if not
Speaker 1: fear right, because I mean, when you are behind the
Speaker 1: wheel of your car, you know you want to be
Speaker 1: in control. You don't get the thought of someone else
Speaker 1: potentially gaining control of the situation that you felt you
Speaker 1: were in control of is that's scary. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's understandable, but apply critical thinking. Know that it is
Speaker 1: not likely to happen. There are other things that are
Speaker 1: far more likely to happen, and as long as you
Speaker 1: take those precautions against those, you're probably okay about these
Speaker 1: other more remote possibilities. Um And again, if you are
Speaker 1: in a position to make decisions about these kind of systems,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, from a car manufacturer or maybe
Speaker 1: you do aftermarket stuff, then keeping that in mind and
Speaker 1: keeping that as as part of your best practices of
Speaker 1: of testing the security of your systems, it's definitely something
Speaker 1: you should look into. I hope you enjoyed that episode
Speaker 1: called Hack that Auto two point oh. Clearly, as cars
Speaker 1: get more and more computerized h there are even more
Speaker 1: literal hacking things we could talk about with vehicles. In fact,
Speaker 1: I have covered some of those in the past, So
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do a follow up to this episode in
Speaker 1: the future. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover in episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech Stuff
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