Testing Out Cell-Phone Viruses on a Prius

Mikko Hypponen writes "Couple of months ago there were rumours floating around that Bluetooth viruses could infect the on-board computers of some Lexus cars, or at least cause some visible effects on them. We took a Toyota Prius to an underground bunker and tested various Bluetooth mobile phone viruses and assorted Bluetooth attacks against the onboard computer. Results were somewhat surprising. It came as no surprise that we could not infect the car, but the Prius performed in the test even better than expected. No matter what we did the car did not react to the Bluetooth traffic at all. Cabir tried to send itself to the car and the car just did not allow the Bluetooth OBEX transfer to happen. Then, the whole car crashed (but not because of a virus)... Full story with pictures in our weblog."

Well, that's good...

[ackthpt]

Apart from the car crashing. Maybe a few less pints of Boddington's next time you head for the bunker, eh?

Still At Risk

[fembots]

The article said "After intensive tests for all morning, the battery of the car was running low".

Does that mean that a similar DOS attack can disable most cars in a car park?

Only works on the Lexus, not the Prius

[WillAffleckUW]

After all, cell phone virii only attack those who pay way too much for a car, without increased efficiency ...

Hmmm, maybe the Matrix is happening ...

Apocolypse Now!

[WankersRevenge]

It came as no surprise that we could not infect the car, but the Prius performed in the test even better than expected.

We're all doomed! [imdb.com]

In other news...

[Bifurcati]

Two bodies were found dead on the side of the road, apparently flung from a speeding vehicle. Satellite tracking followed the car as it drove itself, without driver, to a house in suburban San Diego. Police arrested 14 year old Neville Splink as he prepared to climb into the drivers seat with a modded Bluetooth enabled Playstation 2 running Linux and a copy of Gran Turismo 4. Neville could not be reached for comment, but sources say he couldn't believe how lucky he was that some idiots deliberately loaded his virus into their car. He had been expecting to have to take over their minds with their mobile phones first.

Police have warned all families with nerdy children to be on the look out for unexplained cars turning up in their garage.

Re:Still At Risk

[Vellmont]

Yes. This DOS attack has been known for quite a long time. It's only recently become known outside the hacker community. Some people even accidentally do it to themselves. Among laymen it's called "leaving your lights on".

Rebooting the car...

[gambit3]

Does anyone else feel disturbed by that statement?

We waited hesistantly a moment, turned ignition off and rebooted the car...

Re:Still At Risk

[promantek]

I guess the moderators are valley girls who shriek "Oh my gawd" while skipping together arm-in-arm wearing mini-skirts. Clearly, they find your OMFG comments insightful, but only after 90120 has gone on a commercial break.

that's sophistication, my friend.

Funny, the same thing happened...

[ctl4u]

With my 1979 Toyota Camry no matter what bluetooth signals I sent there was no response. Needless to say, I was shocked!

KITT

[thanjee]

Did KITT ever get a virus?

If he ever got sick it would have been that he was just sick of having David Hasselhoff hanging around all the time.

Toyota should expand its business...

[guardiangod]

into the cellphone industry.

They have done the impossible: they created a bluetooth system that no virus in existant can infect.

Microsoft, are you listening?

God I think I will feel much safer knowing that my cellphone (and probably my comp's OS) is made by Toyota.

Non-M$ car

[kihjin]

Obviously this test was not sponsored by Microsoft [slashdot.org].

The item I liked ...

[jc42]

... was the story from the guy whose cell phone caught the cabir virus, and his phone company's solution was to throw it away and buy a new phone.

Now I'm going to be expecting to hear that Microsoft has adopted this approach (and PHBs are ordering their people to do it) ...

Dumb and dumber...

[ArrayIndexOutOfBound]

This is really good, you guys are killing me.

Trying to infect Prius with a Symbian "virus" is like trying to infect a tree with a choc chip cookie . Hey I can come up with a better one - it's like trying to infect shampoo with a book on eating disorders (now go picture that in your head for a second).

I won't go into debunking this as I have already done that (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137390&cid=11 486620 [slashdot.org]).

But this is so sweet - it takes one dumb kid with too much time on their hands and one even dumber kid to moderate at voila! you get slashdot "news".

Don't you love it!

Re:what a shitty error message

[slacktide]

Oh my god! It's a Safety Nightmare! It's also the exactly how every manual transmission car on the road works, and we don't see endless parades of them rolling down the hill, do we?