The computer doesn't control the steering and breaks are mechanical. There's no remote control.
Unless you sabotage the car, what you're saying is impossible. But if you sabotage the car, you don't need all the electronics. Just wear off the breaks or whatever else.
I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings. Maybe you'd like to add some folklore or magic to what is a tragic, but trivial death.
Brakes in most modern cars are under computer control. They are in mine. I know that because I can disable that control if I want to drive more aggressively.
Before you say something's impossible, you might want to do some research.
Cars can be controlled via their onboard computers.
> I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings.
Wikipedia:
"His Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the Afghanistan war, documented the widespread contempt of him and his staff for civilian officials in the US government and resulted in the general's resignation."
On the journalistic threat scale of 1-10 I'd say Hastings was an 11.
If you re-read my comment carefully, you will see I say it's probably easier to sabotage something else than try to do something overly technical.
I'm pretty certain the Class C hasn't got the features you are talking about and it's a legal requirement that any mechanical action overrides any kind of computer control.
The brakes control you are talking about is probably the emergency brake control that makes the car brake more if it detects you attempt to make an emergency stop.
It can also be an ABS that prevents the wheels from blocking should you break too hard.
I'm confident that the computer will NOT brake while you are driving unless you do an action. It will also not steer unless you ask it to. There are many safeguards to prevent that (otherwise your car will not be allowed to drive).
However, I admit that even if the car cannot be remote controlled by default, one can imagine that with today's technology it's possible to turn any car into a remote controlled one.
I nevertheless think it's overkill and there are probably much simpler and straightforward ways to provoke an accident.
Last but not least, I don't think reporting that a General is highly critical of the Whitehouse would make him an "enemy" of the government, quite the opposite.
Don't fantasize about what's going on, I realize reality is trivial and uninteresting but that's not a reason.
"maliciously bridging between
our car’s two internal subnets"
"we
demonstrate the ability to adversarially control a wide range
of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input"
"We also present composite
attacks that leverage individual weaknesses, including an attack
that embeds malicious code in a car’s telematics unit and
that will completely erase any evidence of its presence after a
crash."
I'm under the impression that computer controlled brakes, like power steering, default to mechanical control. So if the engine starts revving without his consent the driver should still be able to apply the brakes enough to disable or slow down the car.
I don't think that's always entirely true- look at the deaths that occurred with the Toyotas where the accelerator became stuck depressed, obviously shifting into neutral would have been a better choice, but they were clearly unable to provide adequate breaking to stop.
Like I said, it's improbable somebody would go trough the trouble. But that doesn't mean it'd be impossible.
Regarding oldskool sabotage, those aren't quite reliable to produce freak accidents. Too much chance and user behavior involved.
Regarding breaking: Anti-blocking systems can release the breaks all by themselves. They do this by computer input issued after evaluating the sensors for each wheel when they're working. If hacked, they could do this on pretty much any condition.
Regarding steering: assisted steering uses an acctuator to amplify your input. This can be circumvented to steer by itself. Self parking systems make use of this, there's no separate system to make the steering wheel turn for self parking, it reuses the mechanics of assisted steering to do the job.
Exactly, and consider if you had one wheel brake while the other did not for a short moment, it might be like grabbing the steering wheel and cranking the car right into a line of palm trees.
I don't think it is available on a c250 sedan like hastings was apparently driving, but Mercedes (and other manufacturers) have systems that do control steering that could conceivably be remotely hijacked. All of the self-parking systems leave the accelerator to the driver but let the computer handle the steering. Here is a review of 4 different manufacturers' self-parking systems:
I have a Mercedes that self-parks if enabled. It steers the wheel (so the computer can fully steer the car 1000%) but it doesn't apply brakes or the accelerator. Which are also capable of being fully-controlled by the computer. Mercedes has an option (Distronic) where the car can accelerate and brake to a full stop based on the road conditions ahead.
So basically, the on-board computer can fully steer, brake and accelerate/decelerate the vehicle.
I'm not sure about the C class, but there was a huge recall of E class w212 models over the ABS pump / braking system, basically the pump could fail catastrophically and render the car with NO brakes. If they haven't abandoned the silly/unsafe electric over hydraulic full authority control methodology for the braking system then you can't rule out remote controlled brakes.
Without regard to whether Hastings' car had the flawed ABS system (probably not). The very definition of an ABS system is that braking control is taken from the driver and given to a computer, so no the brakes are not immune to hacking, no matter how unlikely you think that scenario is.
The computer doesn't control the steering and breaks are mechanical. There's no remote control.
Unless you sabotage the car, what you're saying is impossible. But if you sabotage the car, you don't need all the electronics. Just wear off the breaks or whatever else.
I think you're overestimating the importance of Mr. Hastings. Maybe you'd like to add some folklore or magic to what is a tragic, but trivial death.