hacking your car

[c172]

[ignoramus]

They've started the skynet beta program!   Oh good!
We may as well just kill ourselves now to avoid the rush....

[MTL]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/.../30462317/

SAN FRANCISCO — Don't send your old clunker of a retro-mobile to the automotive junk yard just yet. It may be the safest machine on the road.
In an article published Tuesday, Wired magazine reports on how it engaged two hackers to see if they could take control of a Jeep Cherokee from the comfort of their living room while writer Andy Greenberg sat nervously at the wheel while the SUV cruised the highway at 70 mph.
Mission accomplished, terrifyingly so. The security experts, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, accessed the Jeep's computer brain through its Uconnect infotainment system and rewrote the firmware to plant their malicious code. Once in, the duo began blasting hip-hop through the stereo system, turned the AC to maximum and, ultimately, killed the transmission and brakes.
Greenberg was unharmed in the demonstration, which took place on a highway in St. Louis, but eventually wound up stranded in a ditch. But the experiment highlights a concern that often isn't addressed head-on in the growing excitement over the prospect of roads dominated by either autonomous or heavily driver-assisted vehicles.

This is so depressing.  I suppose in a sense it is poetic justice for an oil-addicted society that worships status symbols and thinks bigger is always better when it comes to trucks and SUVs; perhaps we deserve it.

But it is just the latest thing in this world, since the advent of the Internet,
that I find depressing....up there with ID theft and Swatting.

The car has so often been my sanctuary when there was nowhere else to go.

Of course I realize it is unlikely, but the possibility that it could happen is just one more thing to fear.

I suppose it is a First World Problem that less fortunate people in third world countries would not be overly sympathetic about.

But it's just one more thing that makes me feel like I CAN'T MOVE in this world, anymore.

Did you know that PACEMAKERS can even be hacked?  scary thought...someone could tamper with your pacemaker.

And there have even been stories in the news about how people hacked into home networks and into the BABY MONITOR
and woke up a sleeping infant by SCREAMING at it, and muttering obscenities and maledictions at it, in the dark.

Who does that to a three-week old baby???

It just makes me so

[brewer]

Yeah, I saw this today on the news. Always thought the upload was a bad idea. Wonder if the dealerships can disable? Probably for a price.