Car computer systems at risk to viruses

BOGUS!!!

 

There was an article a couple of months ago about a testing group that tried to infect a Prius. They did manage to get the Prius to stop working due to a discharged battery! Once they got past that all was normal.

The Denso navigation systems will only accept a few well defined bluetooth transmissions. This is probably the biggest help in protecting against viruses. Bluetooth phones would be much more secure against viruses if they did not accept ring tones, wallpaper or (in particular) games.

 

Just to follow up on jfschultz's post: As I recall, the reason the battery went dead, was not because of any virus that they were able to infect the Prius with but that they kept the car in ready mode rather that Ig-On mode so long while they were trying to infect it that the battery died due to "Natural Causes"!!!

 

I thought the Prius will turn ICE on when battery is low in ready mode. So that's not a "natural cause".

 

You are right, I think jchu did not recall the mode they use correctly. But then, come to think of it, is not recharging an issue with the car ready and in neutral?

 

Yep, Prii will not recharge in neutral. One thing I notice that when I go reverse after I start up the car (when the ICE is on), I see no green arrow going to the battery. Does that mean reverse also won't charge the battery?

 

Just a follow up, this website talks about the details of the experiement.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/ar...5.html#00000553
Look for the May 9, 2005 post.

If you look at the pictures, the car is in "Ig-On" mode (amber light). That's why they have the low battery voltage problem. If they just power up the car, that would never happen.

 

This just shows how Windows'ized people expect computers to be these days.

10 years ago, I used to laugh at email viruses because they're weren't possible in plain text emails until Microsoft allowed execution of HTML in lookOut.

A car catching a virus is assuming the programmer knows what cpu the car is running in order to write the virus in the right language that will not only run on both the phone, but also the car. That's a lot of fat in the program right there slowing down any wireless transfers, besides being very noticeable.

Then this is assuming you can crash the stack, or exploit a buffer overflow of an embedded device (the car) which have quite a history of reliablity, and have that virus stay around past a power-cycle since there isn't a hard-drive to save itself to. When was the last time your VCR got a virus in the last 20 years?

Now, if they're running Windows embedded in cars now (like they recently PUSHed really hard for Navy ships instead of historically reliable UNIX), then all bets are off.