Testing Out Cell-Phone Viruses on a Prius 196
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."
Not Suprising, But still interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I liked the apparent security features in the car, that it didn't react to the bluetooth traffic, but then again, this is probably just due to an inconpatiblility - i.e. the car won't except any type of data but a specific type, like a valid VCARD phone book.
Re:Serious Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Still At Risk (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, it makes a nice whistling sound, but that is kinda the attraction too -- somewhere in the parking garage there are four whistles gradually becoming lower, quieter...
The victim walks out, sees four flats with no apparent damage *WTF*
Nothing as serious as having to buy 4x$120 tires, just aggravating to have to have someone come and repair the wheels onsite (esp in a parking garage where clearance will not permit a rollback trailer)
Re:Virus that pummels users into submission (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Still At Risk (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rebooting the car... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not terribly meaningful (Score:4, Interesting)
There must be hundreds of different versions of the car's software that have varying levels of resilience to the virus.
I can't wait to see the follow up
Re:Still At Risk (Score:2, Interesting)
Data stream capture (Score:2, Interesting)