Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from Hey
Speaker 1: there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: joined me in the studio today is Joe McCormick. Hey, Joe,
Speaker 1: Hey Jonathan. I'm doing great. How are you? I am
Speaker 1: quite well and Joe very graciously agreed to join me
Speaker 1: on this episode where we're going to update a topic
Speaker 1: that I covered with Ben Boland's back on November ten,
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen. The episode came out called Hack
Speaker 1: That Auto. So this is Hacked that Auto two point oh.
Speaker 1: So wait a minute. This was about the technology of
Speaker 1: like hatchets that you used to mutilate and destroy automobiles. No,
Speaker 1: just people named auto. Oh no, like Vondas Mark. That
Speaker 1: sounds horribly violent. It was pretty violent. Ben is a
Speaker 1: Ben is just a ticking time bomb. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Hold on a second. I'm remembering that in the world
Speaker 1: of tech mala gea hack means something different than what
Speaker 1: I do to would it? Does it? Does? It generally
Speaker 1: means that you are, you know, hacking together something to
Speaker 1: accomplish a particular goal, and hacking can mean anything, right
Speaker 1: like it doesn't necessarily the connotation we typically assigned to
Speaker 1: it 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.
Speaker 1: It maybe to increase efficiency, efficiency, maybe the furthest thing
Speaker 1: from 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 limitation that have been placed upon
Speaker 1: it at the manufacturing stage. WHOA, WHOA. So you mean
Speaker 1: like you could overclock your car the same way you
Speaker 1: can overclock your CPU. Well, maybe not the same way,
Speaker 1: but getting a very similar response, because there are governors
Speaker 1: and speed limitters on vehicles right where it is set
Speaker 1: so that the engine might be capable of producing enough
Speaker 1: power to get you to a speed above the quote
Speaker 1: unquote top speed of your vehicle, but there are are
Speaker 1: elements inside the vehicle that limit those speeds. Like you
Speaker 1: can't go beyond them because they essentially cut the power,
Speaker 1: so you're not going to be able to get more
Speaker 1: out of it. But if you hack your vehicle, you could,
Speaker 1: in theory, remove said limitations at your own peril and
Speaker 1: be able to go faster than what the vehicle's manufacturer
Speaker 1: had intended, you know, at the risk of sounding like
Speaker 1: a gullible sheep, I bet those limitations are there for
Speaker 1: a decent reason. They tend to be. Yeah, like, I
Speaker 1: could probably damage your vehicle or do something unsafe if
Speaker 1: you exceed them. I don't know if you have you
Speaker 1: ever been in a car where it reached a certain
Speaker 1: speed and the car was beginning to feel like it
Speaker 1: was not enjoying that experience. Yeah, the first car I had,
Speaker 1: if you got up to about fifty five or so,
Speaker 1: it felt like it was about to come apart. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And 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 is 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 you're talking about violating
Speaker 1: a supposedly secure system making it work for you. So
Speaker 1: Ben and I talked about this as well, and overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: the most prevalent version of that kind of hacking required
Speaker 1: physical access to the vehicle and that you would have
Speaker 1: a laptop that you would plug in with a an
Speaker 1: adapter to your your cars computer system, and with that
Speaker 1: laptop you could alter things with the vehicle. In fact,
Speaker 1: you could even set it up so that you could
Speaker 1: have remote control of the vehicle through the laptop that's
Speaker 1: still physically attached to the car. Oh wow, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: I wouldn't really expect that with I mean, I could
Speaker 1: see how that could be coming with autonomous cars. But
Speaker 1: I'm so you could control like gas and brake 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 stop 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: he 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 it would be harder for me to be
Speaker 1: more pro autonomous vehicle. I am also very pro autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicle despite all these concerns. And one of these concerns
Speaker 1: 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: absolutely right that autonomous cars will have these because we
Speaker 1: have cars right now that have these these wireless vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: from from various systems. Uh, there have been examples of
Speaker 1: people using the entertainment systems within certain cars to hack
Speaker 1: into the rest of the vehicle. Now, you would think
Speaker 1: that these should be networks within a car that are
Speaker 1: completely separate, that don't have anything to do with one another,
Speaker 1: But there are times where, either because the design is
Speaker 1: simpler or because of well intentioned reasons, the they are
Speaker 1: coupled more closely. Like imagine that you have an entertainment
Speaker 1: system that is wired in such a way where the
Speaker 1: volume of the system will automatically adjust based upon your
Speaker 1: ex leuration. So if you accelerate more, the volume goes
Speaker 1: up because it figures, hey, now it's going to be
Speaker 1: a noisier environment, so I need to balance out by
Speaker 1: becoming louder so that the person can continue to have
Speaker 1: the same experience listening to whatever they're listening to, whether
Speaker 1: they're going slowly or quickly. Well, that means that there
Speaker 1: needs to be some data coming from the drive system
Speaker 1: of the vehicle, and it may just be data and
Speaker 1: it may just flow one way, which would be the
Speaker 1: best way to implement that, but it may mean that
Speaker 1: 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 h 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
Speaker 1: that that's certainly 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
Speaker 1: used in order to pick up on this frequency. You
Speaker 1: really need to know probably the beginning of the code,
Speaker 1: which again you can sometimes glean by listening in essentially
Speaker 1: on that key fob um and then you have to
Speaker 1: brute force attack because the way key fobs work is
Speaker 1: it works with a rolling algorithm, so every time you
Speaker 1: press that button, it changes the code, so the cook
Speaker 1: but it's changed based upon an algorithm, so it's based
Speaker 1: upon 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,
Speaker 1: right but it But that means that if you are
Speaker 1: using a remote attack to try and get access to
Speaker 1: a vehicle, then you have to do a brute force
Speaker 1: so this can take minutes up to hours, depending upon
Speaker 1: uh the system and depending upon your luck based upon
Speaker 1: where you're starting from the code. And also it means
Speaker 1: that if you have a keyless entry and you go
Speaker 1: to your car and you try and use it and
Speaker 1: someone has remotely accessed your vehicle. One of the only
Speaker 1: ways you might be able to tell, assuming that your
Speaker 1: vehicle is still there, is that is that it takes
Speaker 1: a couple of presses before anything works, because it will
Speaker 1: take a while for the the code on your key
Speaker 1: fob to match up with the code that's in the car. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you press it and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: nothing's happening, and you press 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. Um, there are other
Speaker 1: examples of someone having a remote control of a vehicle,
Speaker 1: but it was it was by exploiting a system that
Speaker 1: was intended to have this remote shutdown feature. So you
Speaker 1: you know that a lot of vehicles have this ability
Speaker 1: for for a an entity to either remotely shut down
Speaker 1: the engine or do things like hawk the horn, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, Uh, well, I know one scenario in which
Speaker 1: this occurs would be like, so let's say you take
Speaker 1: out a loan on a car and the person who
Speaker 1: sells you the car is not very confident that you
Speaker 1: will pay back that loan. They can put equipment on
Speaker 1: the car that prevents it from starting up, right, so
Speaker 1: they can say, this person isn't paying on their financing,
Speaker 1: we need to shut down the car's ability to run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's essentially a remote kill switch and your car will
Speaker 1: not start at that point. And uh, yeah, it could
Speaker 1: be hopefully they wouldn't be able to turn off the
Speaker 1: engine while you're driving. No, I don't think that's that's
Speaker 1: a possibility, but they could certainly do it, you know,
Speaker 1: so that the next time you try to start up
Speaker 1: your car it doesn't work. And uh, it can be
Speaker 1: used in that case where someone's not keeping up with
Speaker 1: their payments. It can also be used in the case
Speaker 1: of a stolen car. So if your car stolen, you
Speaker 1: report it to the police, you work with the dealership,
Speaker 1: you explain, hey, my vehicle was stolen. They can actually
Speaker 1: activate this remote kill switch so that the criminals who
Speaker 1: have possession of your car are no longer able to
Speaker 1: drive it, and then the police can hopefully locate your
Speaker 1: vehicle and you get it back. Uh Right. So there
Speaker 1: are legitimate reasons why you would want that technology install
Speaker 1: on your vehicle. However, there was at least one case
Speaker 1: where a person who had access to said system, uh,
Speaker 1: accessed it for personal reasons and out of vindictiveness, was
Speaker 1: essentially harassing somebody using the system to mess with their vehicle.
Speaker 1: So if you look at a discussions about car hacking,
Speaker 1: and they always say, like, what are the examples of
Speaker 1: Mali Shiss car hacking, they said, well, outside of research
Speaker 1: and development, where where security researchers are trying their best
Speaker 1: to do this to to see if it's viable, there's
Speaker 1: only one example of it ever actually happening, and in
Speaker 1: that case, it wasn't hacking in the sense of someone
Speaker 1: setting down at their computer and trying to get access
Speaker 1: to a vehicle, someone exploiting an existing system that was
Speaker 1: already attached to that vehicle. But that being said, with
Speaker 1: all those caveats laid out, the issue of wireless hacking
Speaker 1: a vehicle, of remotely accessing a vehicle is by no
Speaker 1: means a dead issue. It is something that is continuously
Speaker 1: brought up, and as of the time that we're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast, which is in May of twenty, there's increasing
Speaker 1: interest in this because of a pair of researchers and
Speaker 1: what they claim they are able to do and what
Speaker 1: they will show off at the black At Conference in August.
Speaker 1: What is that? Well, first I should explain what the
Speaker 1: black Hat Conference is, So it's a um it's essentially
Speaker 1: it's a hacker convention. It's all about discussing security vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: and uh, the ways to exploit them. Now, in hacker circles,
Speaker 1: you have white hats and black hats, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: can argue gray hats. White hat hackers are people who
Speaker 1: are looking for security vulnerabilities with the intent to have
Speaker 1: those security vulnerabilities patched so that they are no longer vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Black hat hackers UH tend to be the folks who
Speaker 1: find security vulnerabilities in order to exploit them, whether that
Speaker 1: is to exploit them directly or to exploit them by
Speaker 1: selling that information to other interested parties. And whether they're
Speaker 1: doing it for cash or for leverage over somebody, or
Speaker 1: just for fun, Yeah, just to build their own reputation,
Speaker 1: as opposed to, you know, a genuine desire to help
Speaker 1: other folks. So even though it's called the black Hat Conference,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean that these are all people who
Speaker 1: are gathering around trying to figure out how to control
Speaker 1: the world through their laptops. Often its actual discussions about
Speaker 1: these are serious concerns that we need to address in
Speaker 1: order to make sure that they don't become huge problems
Speaker 1: go beyond concern to an enormous problem. So the the
Speaker 1: researchers were talking about, actually, I think Ben and I
Speaker 1: mentioned them to Charlie Miller and Chris valisek Uh, their
Speaker 1: two security experts who had talked about hacking cars previously.
Speaker 1: They had UH shown in two thousand thirteen and two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen various ways to hack vehicles. UH, and
Speaker 1: now they are talking that. In the two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: conference in August, they will reveal a way of remotely
Speaker 1: gaining access to a vehicle. It does not require you
Speaker 1: to plug a laptop into a computer. They say that
Speaker 1: you could do this with an unmodified vehicle as soon
Speaker 1: as it rolls off the dealership. Scary, very scary. Um,
Speaker 1: that's an excellent question. I think that I'm sure that
Speaker 1: 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 had identified three different
Speaker 1: criteria for hackability, including things like are the systems interconnected
Speaker 1: with one with one another? How many wireless points of
Speaker 1: entry are are potentially there? That sort of stuff, and
Speaker 1: out of the various criteria, the Jeep Cherokee had the
Speaker 1: most of them, the most examples. Uh. The Infinity Q
Speaker 1: fifty was also up there in the catalacic esconade as
Speaker 1: a as the the SNL Southern character would say was
Speaker 1: also up there, and uh, when we're talking about wireless
Speaker 1: points of vulnerability, really you're talking about any system that
Speaker 1: has that wireless communication capability. So one example, which is
Speaker 1: perfectly innocent in of itself is the tire monitoring system,
Speaker 1: the tire pressure monitoring system. So if you have a
Speaker 1: vehicle that has this, then like you get in your car,
Speaker 1: you turn your you know, you put the key in
Speaker 1: the ignition you or if it's key less ignition, you
Speaker 1: turn on your car, however that may be. And there
Speaker 1: 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 right here, um,
Speaker 1: which is useful. But it's doing so with wireless sensors
Speaker 1: that communicate back to the the computer system that is
Speaker 1: governing all the other systems in the car. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: can see why you wouldn't want wires going to the tires. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it would it would be problematic. Right, So the the
Speaker 1: wireless system is likely communicating with the what's called the
Speaker 1: controller area network bus or can bus, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like the traffic controller of all the different systems
Speaker 1: that feed information into the cars computer, the master control program.
Speaker 1: If not the master control program, it's got to be
Speaker 1: like the master control programs Uh executive assistant, Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's good old David Uh not Yeah Stark
Speaker 1: controlling this. So yeah, exactly, it's it's this this traffic
Speaker 1: controller that sends the information to the computer. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a potential point of vulnerability. And there have been
Speaker 1: examples of being able to track a vehicle based upon
Speaker 1: tracking the unique monitoring frequency for that that tire pressure system.
Speaker 1: So you could potentially track where a vehicle has gone
Speaker 1: by keeping note of this particular this particular wireless communication system,
Speaker 1: if you could, can you get access to more critical
Speaker 1: systems like breaking or steering through that? That remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. So Miller and Uh and Valask have said
Speaker 1: that they have found some interesting stuff through their experiments. Um,
Speaker 1: they haven't had this discussion, so we can't say exactly
Speaker 1: what they revealed. But they have said that uh, or
Speaker 1: at least the black Hat website says that the presentation
Speaker 1: will include starting with remote exploitation, we will show how
Speaker 1: to pivot through different pieces of the v vehicles hardware
Speaker 1: in order to be able to send messages on the
Speaker 1: can bus to critical electronic control units e c us.
Speaker 1: We will conclude by showing several can messages that affect
Speaker 1: physical systems of the vehicle. So that that's pretty vague, right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't specifically say that it could do something like
Speaker 1: break the car as it b R A K E
Speaker 1: the car like apply the brakes. Doesn't say that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, explicitly, so maybe their methodology will be limited.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they say that they plan on showing
Speaker 1: both the reality and the limitations of remote hacking on vehicles.
Speaker 1: So a lot of security experts have said, listen, this
Speaker 1: is something to be concerned about, yes, but not something
Speaker 1: to panic over because one, they have not indicated how
Speaker 1: extensive these these messages can go, like what what the
Speaker 1: effects can be. Two, they haven't discussed their methodology of
Speaker 1: coming up with the ability, the way of doing it,
Speaker 1: or if whether or not they plan on sharing in
Speaker 1: detail how it's done. And three, it may require so
Speaker 1: much effort to do this that, just like the keyless entry,
Speaker 1: no one would ever bother to do it, because they
Speaker 1: are easier ways to sabotage a vehicle than going through
Speaker 1: these processes. But showing that it's possible means that further,
Speaker 1: like the future generations of vehicles could be built and
Speaker 1: designed to counteract this sort of stuff from the from
Speaker 1: the get go so that it doesn't become attempting enough
Speaker 1: target to make further investigation into that that line of attack.
Speaker 1: Right like, if you if you find a vulnerability and
Speaker 1: you find a really hard way that you can exploit
Speaker 1: that vulnerability, that might lead to other people saying maybe
Speaker 1: I can find an easier way to exploit that same vulnerability.
Speaker 1: As long as that sunability exists, and it's a it's
Speaker 1: a target, and if we ever get to a point
Speaker 1: where it's easier to attack the target than other methods
Speaker 1: of messing with a vehicle, then you're in trouble. So
Speaker 1: the hope is that these systems one could be addressed
Speaker 1: by updating firmware on existing vehicles, and two could be
Speaker 1: prevented in future vehicle design. Uh that being said, of course,
Speaker 1: we still don't know what they're gonna say yet. It
Speaker 1: may it may be that this is all uh, you know, largely,
Speaker 1: you know, the speculation that we're having is largely harmless.
Speaker 1: That could be that's best case scenario. Worst case would be, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we figured out that we could with a laptop and
Speaker 1: a wireless transmitter, we can make your card do whatever
Speaker 1: we wanted to do. That would be bad. Well, I
Speaker 1: would say, actually, the best case scenario would be that, um,
Speaker 1: that they actually do turn up whatever are the most
Speaker 1: critical vulnerabilities that exist in that leads manufacturers to take
Speaker 1: better steps to protect their cars. Yeah, assuming that there
Speaker 1: are 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. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: as scary as the idea of somebody hacking the car
Speaker 1: you or driving is, Yeah, about the only thing I
Speaker 1: could imagine scarier than that is somebody hacking the airplane
Speaker 1: you're writing in. Yeah, that would that is a a
Speaker 1: sobering thought right now. Of course, we would hope that
Speaker 1: nothing like that is possible. That airplanes are designed to
Speaker 1: be as secure as possible, and that they don't really
Speaker 1: have any vulnerabilities that you could exploit, like like these,
Speaker 1: you know, tire pressure gauges or anything like that. We
Speaker 1: would hope, but that might not necessarily be the case,
Speaker 1: because this month, in May, if you haven't seen yet,
Speaker 1: some media outlets have been reporting that a security researcher
Speaker 1: named Chris Roberts may have hacked an airplane and send
Speaker 1: it off course. Yeah. Now, the reason why you're building
Speaker 1: so many qualifiers into this statement is because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, there's there are a lot of differing accounts
Speaker 1: about what exactly was done and or happened. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: our information is a kind of like he said, he said,
Speaker 1: he said issue, So I'll explain that as we go forward.
Speaker 1: But who is Chris Roberts so for years he has
Speaker 1: been known as a white hat hacker. We talked about
Speaker 1: black hats and white hats earlier. If you're a listener
Speaker 1: to the show, you're probably familiar anyway. But the white
Speaker 1: hat is somebody who at least ostensibly uh goes out
Speaker 1: and looks for vulnerabilities and systems in order to improve security,
Speaker 1: to show you, hey, here's where you're weak. You should
Speaker 1: shore up your defenses in this area. And so Roberts
Speaker 1: for years has been known as a white hat hacker,
Speaker 1: especially in a vionic sort of publicly denouncing alleged security
Speaker 1: problems and vulnerabilities in networks airline manufacturers put into their aircraft.
Speaker 1: So keeping in mind that, you know, as the aircraft
Speaker 1: experience has evolved over time, Roberts would argue it has
Speaker 1: introduced vulnerabilities from an electronics standpoint computer standpoints, So things
Speaker 1: like the in flight entertainment systems, the i f E
Speaker 1: s or the fact that a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of airlines offer WiFi on their flights. Yeah, that these
Speaker 1: could potentially be vulnerabilities. Yeah, and so you know you
Speaker 1: would just hope that well, I mean, if a plane's
Speaker 1: showing me movies on some central computer system. Surely that
Speaker 1: computer is not linked to the computers that control things
Speaker 1: like 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 flight 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 st 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, uh to trigger a command that makes
Speaker 1: the oxygen masks descend on all the passengers, whereupon you
Speaker 1: would uh adjust your own mask before helping others. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's important to remember. Now. Of course, it's important to
Speaker 1: point out that Roberts did not do anything. He was
Speaker 1: just tweeting a joke. Still, one could and probably has
Speaker 1: argued that such a joke was at best in poor
Speaker 1: taste and at worst really dumb. Yeah. Well, especially because
Speaker 1: the FBI acted on it. The FBI agents detained him,
Speaker 1: interrogated him, and confiscated his electronics. He even tweeted out
Speaker 1: a picture of the electronics that were confiscated and said, well,
Speaker 1: they're all encrypted, but they're all gone now. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that was last month in April. But in May, 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 written up
Speaker 1: by FBI special agent Mark Hurley. According to this document,
Speaker 1: Roberts had all ready voluntarily spoken with the FBI in
Speaker 1: February and March of so a few months ago to
Speaker 1: inform them about basically what he claimed were security vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: in these in flight entertainment systems that we were talking
Speaker 1: about before. And he identified several aircraft, in particular the
Speaker 1: Boeing seven hundred, the seven thirty seven, nine hundred, the
Speaker 1: seven fifty seven two hundred, and the Airbus A three twenty. Now,
Speaker 1: if you'll notice, he identified in his tweet that he
Speaker 1: was on A seven hundred, one of the ones that
Speaker 1: had these in flight entertainment system vulnerabilities according to him,
Speaker 1: and so that's sort of the joke he was making.
Speaker 1: He was like, Okay, remember these things I've been talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm on one of these planes now. So the document,
Speaker 1: the warrant application, claims that Roberts told FBI agents on
Speaker 1: these earlier conversations that he had exploited these security flaws
Speaker 1: and penetrated in flight entertainment networks in midflight. So he
Speaker 1: claims between he penetrated i FE systems fifteen to twenty times,
Speaker 1: and he said he gained access to these i FE
Speaker 1: systems by physically plugging in. I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 1: So he said he physically plugged in via a modified
Speaker 1: Cat six Ethernet cable into the seat electronics box or SEB,
Speaker 1: and these are found under the seats in some airplanes,
Speaker 1: so you can imagine his process. Basically, what he said
Speaker 1: he did is he reach under the seat in front
Speaker 1: of him and sort of wiggle this box and squeeze
Speaker 1: it until the cover comes off, which is quite the
Speaker 1: feat because many of these are fixed by screws. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll go into we'll go into potential objections to the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. So I've never tried to get into
Speaker 1: a seat electronic box myself. Neither have, uh, nor will I,
Speaker 1: and nor should you, because it's not a good thing
Speaker 1: to try to mess with. But what he said is
Speaker 1: he got the cover off and he'd plug in. It's
Speaker 1: kind of strange that nobody ever seemed to like notice
Speaker 1: him doing this. One of thee to the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh so, and again, just to reiterate, this is
Speaker 1: what the warrant application claims he told the FBI earlier
Speaker 1: this year. So it's several levels of hearsay. Um, But yeah,
Speaker 1: they said he so he said he would plug in
Speaker 1: with this Cat six ethernet cable and that would give
Speaker 1: him access to the plane's i FE system, the inflight
Speaker 1: entertainment one and then and I'm going to read just
Speaker 1: a direct quote from the warrant application in this next part.
Speaker 1: It claims that Roberts told them he quote connected to
Speaker 1: other systems on the airplane network after he exploited SLASH,
Speaker 1: gained access to or quote hacked the i FE system.
Speaker 1: He stated that he then overwrote code on the airplane's
Speaker 1: thrust management computer. While a board of flight, He stated
Speaker 1: that he successfully commanded the system he had accessed to
Speaker 1: issue the CLB or climb command. He stated that he
Speaker 1: thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb, resulting
Speaker 1: in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during
Speaker 1: one of these flights. He also stated that he used
Speaker 1: Vortex software after compromising SLASH, exploiting or quote hacking the
Speaker 1: airplane's networks. He used the software to monitor traffic from
Speaker 1: the cockpit system and if true, this is fascinating. The
Speaker 1: warrant application claims Robert said he used default I d
Speaker 1: s and passwords to compromise the network. That was a
Speaker 1: face palm. There if that's true, people change your passwords.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, here, here, here's one thing I would argue,
Speaker 1: as far as the changing of the passwords is yes,
Speaker 1: as it should not be default. At the same time,
Speaker 1: this is a difficult, UH scenario because you have multiple
Speaker 1: flight crews all using the same equipment. So how do
Speaker 1: you do I D password management in that case? Like
Speaker 1: assuming that assuming that the idea and password is is
Speaker 1: unique to the vehicle, to the aircraft, and not unique
Speaker 1: to the crew. So if if it's unique to the crew,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. You know, if it's if it's the
Speaker 1: pilot and copilot who have to put in this I
Speaker 1: D and password, and it's the same for whichever aircraft
Speaker 1: are in, that's one thing. But I suspect that's not
Speaker 1: the case. I suspect it's more unique to the aircraft.
Speaker 1: That's more. That's tricky. How do you where do you
Speaker 1: record the information for the aircraft so that the crew
Speaker 1: has access to it? Um? I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you can do better than default.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I'm sure, And I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to this question. And I mean I would hesitate to
Speaker 1: ask because I don't think I don't need to know.
Speaker 1: As long as I know that they are practicing good
Speaker 1: security measures, as long as they're not doing the default
Speaker 1: ide and password, Uh, then whatever you know, I'm maybe uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course he claimed he after this that
Speaker 1: he used a virtual environment to build a virtual version
Speaker 1: of the airplane's network that he could then study safely,
Speaker 1: and so to to reiterate this, he according to the
Speaker 1: FBI document, Roberts claimed he steered an airplane, He plugged
Speaker 1: into an airplane from a passenger seat, and caused the
Speaker 1: airplane to briefly divert off course. That's amazing and amazingly
Speaker 1: scary if true. Yeah, that that is that is incredibly
Speaker 1: sobering if in fact it is true. Now, there are
Speaker 1: some things to consider, and we'll get fully into some
Speaker 1: questions about this story later on. One of the things
Speaker 1: is that I think there might be some confusion online
Speaker 1: in reaction to this story, where one of the things
Speaker 1: is that Roberts was not claiming that he did this
Speaker 1: on the day he was arrested. The warrant application is
Speaker 1: saying that he told them he had done this in
Speaker 1: previous years. Yeah, and they just got around to arresting him. Later. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think they got around to arresting him because of
Speaker 1: this tweet and then because they suspected that he had
Speaker 1: been messing with the flight he was on that day
Speaker 1: and in April, even though he claims I think he
Speaker 1: claims that he didn't mess with it that day. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so there's there was. I believe there was. Part
Speaker 1: of the the accusation was that the this this electronics box,
Speaker 1: the seat the CEB had been altered, but Robert says, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't, that wasn't me. Yeah. Yeah, So the FBI
Speaker 1: claimed it showed signs of tampering. The seat, the one
Speaker 1: under the seat in front of him on the flight
Speaker 1: he'd been on that day looked like it had 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's 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 proves 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 taking taking
Speaker 1: that approach where you are potentially putting the lives of
Speaker 1: 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 that there
Speaker 1: already in danger and you're trying to get something done.
Speaker 1: The best I could say is that there has to
Speaker 1: be some means of getting that message across without physically
Speaker 1: altering the pathway of the aircraft, Like you could send
Speaker 1: a message some other way or you could document what
Speaker 1: you 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 u of Robert's supposed story? Did Robert's
Speaker 1: mislead the FBI? Did the FBI not understand what he
Speaker 1: was telling them or did? Or were they misleading in
Speaker 1: their report? But there are places along the line where
Speaker 1: we could have gotten the wrong story from this document.
Speaker 1: So no matter where the fault may lie, there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of people who have pointed out problems
Speaker 1: with the story. So whether it was the original Roberts
Speaker 1: story or was the retelling that's kind of beside the point.
Speaker 1: Here are some of the objections. One of the big
Speaker 1: ones is one that we've raised already, the idea that
Speaker 1: if it requires plugging a modified cable into an electronic
Speaker 1: box that typically is not accessible by a passenger, why
Speaker 1: didn't anyone else notice or comment on it? Or you know,
Speaker 1: because again, it requires some manipulation of the box to
Speaker 1: get access to it, even according to the affidavit story
Speaker 1: of what Roberts was saying, um, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these do have screws that are set in, so you
Speaker 1: would have to unscrew 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 assume
Speaker 1: is that the i f E is in fact an
Speaker 1: interconnected network with the same computers that control the flight controls,
Speaker 1: and 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 you
Speaker 1: from your point of origin? How far are you from
Speaker 1: your destination? But all that being said, that could totally
Speaker 1: be connected to computer systems that have no other connection
Speaker 1: to anything else, right, Like, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: redundant systems of board aircraft for very good reason. You
Speaker 1: want there to be redundancy for safety. So and it
Speaker 1: could also be that the information that's come 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 says,
Speaker 1: the connections are limited and offer no access to flight
Speaker 1: controls through the i F e uh and that means
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't be able to get access to this
Speaker 1: thrust management control using the i F It would be impossible.
Speaker 1: So you know, you might be able to hack the
Speaker 1: i f and get access to it and maybe require
Speaker 1: everyone to watch biodome, but you wouldn't necessarily be able
Speaker 1: to tear It would be awful, yeah, but not as
Speaker 1: 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 FE has. It may only
Speaker 1: have access to vent control. Then 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 with 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: Roberts 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 hundred story, and it could be that it was
Speaker 1: a 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 on a seven hundred when he did this,
Speaker 1: it's impossible because the system he claims to have taken
Speaker 1: advantage of can't do that. He also points out the
Speaker 1: eye cast system you were talking about earlier, says that
Speaker 1: that just displays messages. It doesn't have any control over
Speaker 1: the aircraft at all. All it does is tell you stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a readoubt essentially. Ah. And trying to compromise a
Speaker 1: computer by issuing print commands. Yeah, yeah, you might be
Speaker 1: able to print some naughty words out, but it's not
Speaker 1: it's not affecting any other part of the computer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he also pointed out that the I f
Speaker 1: E and cockpit systems had no point of commonality except
Speaker 1: for the fact that they both drew power from the
Speaker 1: same power source. But that's it. They didn't have any crossover,
Speaker 1: there was no connectivity between the two. So it is
Speaker 1: entirely possible that the this is a big fuss over
Speaker 1: over largely nothing. Um But I mean I certainly hope
Speaker 1: so yeah, But I also hope no matter what the
Speaker 1: true facts of this case, where I hope this is
Speaker 1: at least encouraging airline manufacturers and the people who designed
Speaker 1: their their hardware and software to re examine the security
Speaker 1: of their aircraft, right yeah, and really put it through
Speaker 1: vigorous testing. And I don't mean to suggest that they
Speaker 1: don't already do that. I imagine that the companies, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously they have a vested interest in making sure those
Speaker 1: those systems are tested vigorously with lots of different attempts
Speaker 1: at intrusion. The various scenarios have to be run about
Speaker 1: how likely or possible is this, because I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's life and death, and a company has to
Speaker 1: be able to rely upon having the reputation of being
Speaker 1: responsible for something as important and potentially as dangerous as
Speaker 1: air travel. Um. So I I'm fairly confident that that
Speaker 1: the the security vulnerabilities are very seriously looked at in
Speaker 1: these cases. Whether the Roberts case is as extreme as
Speaker 1: has been indicated in that affidavit, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: if that is a possibility, then that's certainly warrants a
Speaker 1: re examination of how these network systems are laid out
Speaker 1: within an aircraft. Now let me do let me tell
Speaker 1: you something. This is background, Jonathan. Way before I worked
Speaker 1: for How Stuff Works. Years before I had worked for uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I worked for a couple of consulting firms.
Speaker 1: Is before that. This is way back when I was
Speaker 1: looking for my first job. I landed some contract work
Speaker 1: with an airline and my job was to transcribe audio
Speaker 1: files that were detailing the various systems aboard aircraft into
Speaker 1: text files so that there would be a text copy
Speaker 1: of these audios. As far as I know, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the manuals or the hard copy anywhere. So it
Speaker 1: was my job to transcribe hours of technical documentation about
Speaker 1: these aircraft, which included things like how the cables were
Speaker 1: laid out in the systems. And it was fascinating to
Speaker 1: learn at the time. It was nothing, you know, that
Speaker 1: was exploitable or anything like that. It was just interesting.
Speaker 1: But it really displayed to me the care that goes
Speaker 1: into designing these systems to make certain that this redundancy
Speaker 1: is there. And it actually really reassured me quite a bit.
Speaker 1: All I was doing this like, it removes some of
Speaker 1: the the mystery behind aircraft and also displayed exactly how
Speaker 1: incredibly um detail oriented these designers had to be, which
Speaker 1: you know, makes sense if you think about it for
Speaker 1: more than a second you realize, oh, of course they
Speaker 1: have to be. But it really drove that home. So
Speaker 1: I was very thankful to actually have that experience. It's
Speaker 1: one that not a lot of people have necessarily had. Now.
Speaker 1: I will also say that it was for a lot
Speaker 1: of old aircraft that aren't around anymore, because this was
Speaker 1: many years ago and those aircraft have since been retired
Speaker 1: from various fleets. But I think there's some old aircraft
Speaker 1: still in circulation. Yeah, but you don't see a whole
Speaker 1: lot of these gigantic old war horses. They've been they've
Speaker 1: been replaced by newer more. Um. Yeah, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: back back when uh an aircraft consisted of a giant
Speaker 1: rubber band and a lot of hope, No, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like that. But other thing I wanted to point out
Speaker 1: kind of going back to the car discussion, just briefly,
Speaker 1: is that whether or not these concerns are critical, like
Speaker 1: whether or not these are things that we really need
Speaker 1: to worry about. Most most security experts say right now,
Speaker 1: the trouble you'd have to go through in order to
Speaker 1: exploit any of these so called vulnerabilities would be so
Speaker 1: great as to render them meaningless. That doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: because there's been so much public interest shown on the
Speaker 1: story for obvious reasons. That is, it has prompted politicians
Speaker 1: to get involved. And Congressman Ed Markey sent out a
Speaker 1: letter to twenty automakers after the two thousand thirteen Black
Speaker 1: Hat conference that that are earlier one where uh they
Speaker 1: were demonstrating the ability to hack vehicles by directly hooking
Speaker 1: up computers to the diagnostic system UM and he sent
Speaker 1: these letter to twenty automakers to ask about their secure
Speaker 1: A measures for wireless attacks. Now, all of the automakers
Speaker 1: that responded, and I think sixteen of twenty cent responses
Speaker 1: something like that, But all of the response the ones
Speaker 1: that responded said their vehicles had wireless points of access,
Speaker 1: so at least one wireless point of access that could
Speaker 1: potentially be used to connect to the car, not necessarily
Speaker 1: exploit of vulnerability, but to connect. Seven of the respondents
Speaker 1: said that they used a third party to test their
Speaker 1: systems for security vulnerabilities, so essentially white hat hackers. They
Speaker 1: went outside their own company to hire contractors and say,
Speaker 1: see if you can gain wireless access, remote access to
Speaker 1: these security systems, and if you can or these these
Speaker 1: what are supposed to be secured systems, and if you can,
Speaker 1: let us know how you did it so we can
Speaker 1: address that before we release the vehicle as a production model.
Speaker 1: Very responsible, But only two said that their vehicles had
Speaker 1: countermeasures for hacking attacks on stuff like breaking and steering systems.
Speaker 1: So the story that gets out from this is that
Speaker 1: you know, only a couple of car manufacturers when they
Speaker 1: weren't named, actually have the security measures in place, and
Speaker 1: only seven are using third parties to test their systems.
Speaker 1: The flip side of that argument could be there's no
Speaker 1: demonstrable security issue yet that that would be enough to
Speaker 1: create a concern. However, it is good to be aware
Speaker 1: of it and to perhaps start building in these kind
Speaker 1: of safety features moving forward, knowing that it's not like
Speaker 1: the world's going to get less connected, right we're gonna
Speaker 1: continue to see that trend go, so we need to
Speaker 1: be certain that we're doing so in a responsible way,
Speaker 1: in a safe way. Totally excellent. I'm glad you agree. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was this was a fun kind of thing to
Speaker 1: look at. And I mean, ultimately, I would always argue,
Speaker 1: apply critical thinking to the situation. Don't react with your
Speaker 1: initial emotional reaction. I mean, anyone who sees anything like this,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the first emotional reaction is a fear, a
Speaker 1: feeling of unease, if not fear right because I mean,
Speaker 1: when you are behind the wheel of your car, you
Speaker 1: know you want to be in control. You don't get
Speaker 1: the thought of someone else potentially gaining control of the
Speaker 1: situation that you felt you were in control of is
Speaker 1: that's scary. So, I mean it's understandable, but apply critical thinking.
Speaker 1: Know that it is not likely to happen. There are
Speaker 1: other things that are far more likely to happen, and
Speaker 1: as long as you take those precautions against those, you're
Speaker 1: probably okay about these other more remote possibilities. Um And again,
Speaker 1: if you are in a position to make decisions about
Speaker 1: these kind of systems, whether it's you know, from a
Speaker 1: car manufacturer or maybe you do aftermarket stuff then keeping
Speaker 1: that in mind and keeping that as as part of
Speaker 1: your best practices of of testing the security of your systems.
Speaker 1: It's definitely something you should look into. Joe, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining me. Thanks for having me, man, I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to talk about this since I saw the article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was fun to kind of follow up on
Speaker 1: an previous episode that actually, you know, it really did
Speaker 1: warrant this new discussion, and we'll probably end up having
Speaker 1: another follow up once the the August Black Hat conferences over.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it would be good for me
Speaker 1: to do an episode just kind of following up on
Speaker 1: the stuff that comes out of these things like def
Speaker 1: Con and black Hat, so that folks can know, all right,
Speaker 1: what were the vulnerabilities that were discovered? How bad is it?
Speaker 1: Those are two good questions to answer. So I will
Speaker 1: try to do that this year and and follow up
Speaker 1: on that because I think it'd be really interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I've got buddies who are hackers, so they can
Speaker 1: give me the inside story. Maybe I'll get Snubs to
Speaker 1: come on, Shannon Morris to come on, or or Darren
Speaker 1: Kitchen to come on and talk about it because they're
Speaker 1: both super smart about that stuff, way smarter than I am. Guys,
Speaker 1: I'll listen to that. Yeah, if you'll be fantastic, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll even have a three person show. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's always that we have three microphones in here. There's
Speaker 1: no reason why we can't do that. So, guys, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. You can check out Joe's
Speaker 1: work at other locations. He's one of the hosts and
Speaker 1: writers for Forward Thinking. So we do the Forward Thinking
Speaker 1: podcast twice a week Wednesdays and Fridays, and Joe has
Speaker 1: written for the video series as well, and so you
Speaker 1: can check us out there. Joe, you also write for
Speaker 1: some of the video series and appear occasionally in them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I write for brain stuff and uh and other house
Speaker 1: stuff Works videos and you can check those out on
Speaker 1: the house stup Works main page on YouTube or at
Speaker 1: the brain Stuff page. Yeah, those are awesome. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. They range all over the map,
Speaker 1: from super cool science two, super scary stuff to really
Speaker 1: just quirky fun facts that you might not have thought about.
Speaker 1: They're always fun to work on, so check those out.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future guests on the
Speaker 1: show topics. You know, you have questions or comments, You
Speaker 1: have your own insight into things like hacking vehicles, Send
Speaker 1: me a message the email addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tumbler to handle it. All three of those
Speaker 1: is tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, how stuff works dot com