Hacker Disables Over 100 Cars Remotely

C'mon, Wired. <i>Hacker</i>?<p>He logged into the web interface from home using a password.<p>The better headline would have been "Poor Security Allows Disgruntled Employee to Disable Over 100 Cars Remotely."

I would consider what this 'hacker' did a service to humanity, because now I know that something much more evil than <i>him</i> exists, namely this:<p><pre><code> a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. </code></pre> That's horrible! Why isn't wired concentrating on <i>that</i> aspect of the story? <i>That's</i> the story. That some hacker used it to have some fun honking horns is beside the point.<p>If I found out something like that existed in my car, I'd be <i>livid</i>!<p>EDIT: from the comments I see it's for derelicts who agree to have it installed. hmph. note to self: calm down

These systems have come a long way since I last looked in on this technology.<p>When I lived in Detroit the Mel Farr autogroup has a system (that I believe was semi-proprietary/in-house design) that they would install on high-risk loan vehicles. It was activated over a pager network and would allow them to remotely disable the starter on a vehicle if the weekly (yes, weekly) payment hadn't been made in time.<p>It was not an uncommon occurrence to hear of of see vehicles that were left running 24/7 until the owner could scrape up enough cash for their payment. The system at that time only disables the starter, so once the car was running you were good as long as you didn't shut it off.<p>Obviously the maturity of this system has come a long way since that time (1996ish).

I wonder how many of the car owners knew there was a remote disable switch in their cars.<p>Also, I suspect this is a small outbreak of The Future we're all about to inhabit.

Is this the sort of system one would want locked down to only be accessible from certain IP addresses? Like the dealership's IP address?<p>It truly baffles me how even the most basic security precautions seem to be beyond the ken of $100/hour professionals/companies.

Funny. Also, these are very easy to bypass if you are at all familiar with automotive alarm or remote-start installation.

Is it really legal to install something like that on a customer's car without their knowledge? Or did the customers willingly submit to that deal? Over my dead body would I let someone put a remote-operated controller with web access into anything I own. (Hence I'm not going to buy an iphone or a kindle that you use at the pleasure of the corporation...)<p>This is worse though, it's like the physical manifestation of malware!

Oh, that's brilliant: "What, you can't make your car payment? Let's see you get to work now!"

Wow... I'm more concerned that car dealers are actually installing boxes like this in cars.<p>Just another reason why I prefer the older cars from the 90's where they don't have hundreds of miles of wiring and eight layers of plastic above the engine to prevent maintenance.

Big deal. I'll be impressed when he can do that to my '72 Pinto.

In Other News: Real hackers will now be monitoring pager communications for the signals sent to these cars and do it themselves without the company website.