The Shoddy State of Automotive Wireless Security

angry tapir writes "Researchers from Rutgers University and University of South Carolina have found that wireless communications between new cars and their tires can be intercepted or even forged. While the potential for misuse may be minimal, this vulnerability points to a troubling lack of rigor with secure software development for new automobiles, said Wenyuan Xu, a computer science assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, who was a co-lead on the study. The researchers will present their findings at the Usenix Security Symposium, being held this week in Washington DC."

Re:Probably the right design choice

[pwagland]

That is a valid point about the communications, however, from the article, if incorrect data is sent by something pretending to be the tire gauge, it was enough to corrupt the controller to the point where even a simple reboot was not enough to fix it. It had to be replaced by the dealer. Certainly resources need to be allocated wisely however when the device crashes due to invalid inputs, that is at best annoying, at worst very expensive to repair.

Re:If you've got a toll tag...

[TheLink]

If you carry a cellphone with you and are within "coverage", you're already tracked.

They can find out which towers your phone has been talking to and thus figure out where you've been.

Lets skip to the heart of the matter

[CdBee]

Cars don't need wireless sensors. In fact they don't need most of the electronics that gets built in at all. This may seem old-fashioned but for nearly a century a complicated non-electronic system called 'THE DRIVER" would monitor the state of the car and act appropriately when a deflating tyre is detected. I believe this system is moderately effective and not subject to radio spoofing.

Ask me to design my ideal car and it'll have a lightweight but strong aluminium body, a simple, efficient diesel engine, comfortable seats and a decent stereo. Everything else is chaff, I don't even need ABS.

Re:Lets skip to the heart of the matter

[Thanshin]

Ask me to design my ideal car and it'll have a lightweight but strong aluminium body, a simple, efficient diesel engine, comfortable seats and a decent stereo. Everything else is chaff, I don't even need ABS.

I'd rather have airbags than a decent stereo.

However, before even thinking about airbags, I'd really enjoy to have lights, windshield, mirrors, ...

Brakes are nice too. unless you're planning to go slow enough to brake with your foot.

Re:Probably the right design choice

[DDLKermit007]

Actually this is all old hat at this point. This guy is just stealing from a Def Con talk which needs attribution to Mike Hertzfeld. I was at the talk that first brought this about. It was a little jaw dropping. He came up with ways to track people around cities using the information from the systems. That in itself isn't so bad since almost everyone has Bluetooth and/or active wireless scanning enabled on their phones, but I digress (the police use this method already since it requires no court order). The really meat & potatoes was where if he flooded the system with garbage data over the wireless something interesting happened, the car shut off. Thats the real crazy part to me, that the system is that vulnerable.

Tire sensors must last years on battery

[gmueckl]

Tire sensors are built to run on battery for years. You can't easily get to them and change the battery, so these things are extreme low power devices. Each line of code for these controllers costs real world battery lifetime and shortens maintenance cycles. The same goes for extra crypto hardware: every transistor costs. So I'm not surprised that the protocol is not secured to oblivion. There simply isn't room for that unless battery storage capacities rise by an order of magnitude or two. So, a part of me wonders whether this researcher has had a look at the constraints of these systems and understood them before he tried to make the news.

Still, this is no excuse for being able to corrupt the receiving controller irreparably by some protocol error. These errors can occur normally as transmission errors, not just through deliberate attacks. This is where the sloppy engineering exists and the only part of the story that is actually newsworthy.

Re:Disconnected from reality...

[tweak13]

Go try and buy new tires and see how far you get when you refuse to tell the dealer your name. He (or rather, the government) wants a name associated with the tires RFID chips

As someone who sold tires for years, I can tell you that there's a foolproof way to get tires without giving out your name. I realize it's crafty and devious, which is why you may not have thought of it. Here it is: Make something up. Wild, I know, but there's about a 99% chance it will work because nobody gives a shit. Seriously, take off the tinfoil hat.

When I was working for a major chain selling tires, I asked for a name for one and only one reason. Our software wouldn't let me make an invoice without a name. It also required a few other things, but it's just as easy to make up a phone number too. If you lied to me at any point, how the hell would I know? It's not like I asked people to present ID to get tires.

Re:Lets skip to the heart of the matter

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

I don't care if you think you can pump the brakes well. ABS can pump them a lot faster, and it can do something you can't ever do without drastically changing the controls design: it can pump the brakes individually by wheel.
Not sure why parent is a troll, since he is correct modern ABS can brake each wheel individually allowing for maximum control under braking. So unless you're driving the McLaren MP4/12, ABS can do a better job braking each wheel then you can.

Re:Lets skip to the heart of the matter

[boring, tired]

My last car did this. Driving on snow or very wet roads would trigger the low tire pressure warning. It did detect an actual low tire once but there were so many false positives that I learned to ignore it. One good thing is that it forced me to keep a pressure gauge in the car so I could check the tires and reset the warning light.

Re:Lets skip to the heart of the matter

[camperdave]

This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...

So why isn't it showing up?

In order to deal with the massive volume of readers, Slashdot periodically builds a static page. This is what gets served to you when you read Slashdot, not an on-the-fly dynamic page built from the comments database. It takes a few minutes for your comments to become part of the static pages. I think it even says that when you hit submit.

Re:Lets skip to the heart of the matter

[Xacid]

But then they let women drive... /obligatory mysogyny.