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Comment by xorfish | Hacker News Reader

> "I think there are a lot of reasons to consider that exceedingly unlikely"

What are those reasons?

The code-based manipulations are relatively well understood by cyber security professionals, which Tesla undoubtedly has on staff. There are existing solutions to at least slow the spread of these, even if it's as rudimentary as an emergency shutoff as soon as Tesla recognizes an anomaly.

Edit: downvote for what?

Iran has cyber security professionals - and physical controls over the hardware - but thus far that doesn't seem to be perfect protection against stuff like Stuxnet. The idea that cars can't be effectively and rapidly hacked seems overconfident.

Iran has insufficient resources compared to the nations targeting it. Unless a nation state decides to target Tesla, we're probably alright.

> Unless a nation state decides to target Tesla...

I would imagine that's a certainty.

It should read:

"sufficiently capable nation state..."

Which I doubt is as many as you're implying given the use of the term "certainty."

I doubt it's few enough to conclude "we're probably alright".

Then you should read it further as:

"... with the intent to directly harm average citizens."

Which yes, I'd argue is a negligible amount.

Am I alone in thinking that in case of a war between advanced countries every single one will come to a halt because of no power, no gas, no water no anything? No bombs required.

Contingency plan: go back to the technology of 50+ years ago. Remember the old unwired unhackable Battlestar Galactica vs the newer ships hacked by Cylons.

I think the scary scenario is advanced countries thinking a sneak attack will succeed and/or be deniable.

Something like https://www.wired.com/story/how-30-lines-of-code-blew-up-27-... applied on wide scale to a developed nation's power infrastructure has the potential for enormous numbers of deaths without the "well obviously the rest of the world will hate us" consequences of nuking someone.

That's the case today, sure.

But, private corporations can be wound up. Nobody is ultimately obligated to maintain this kind of work.

If shit hits the fan, then it's not obvious that "Tesla, Inc." will stick around to deal with the consequences. (If it becomes medium-term unprofitable, then it seems to me obvious that it won't.)

>(If it becomes medium-term unprofitable, then it seems to me obvious that it won't.)

I'll add that while I think it's unlikely ANY incorporated publicly traded business would stick it out to deal with the consequences... TESLA seems to have treated medium-term unprofitablity as a consequence of failing to meet quality and production goals without heavy divergence from long-term profitability plans.

Don't forget that the "Move fast and break things" motto was born out of the software world. So claiming something is a software company works both for and against them in this case. Think of Heartbleed to understand why having software engineers and literally millions of eyes on a problem might still mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. And understanding a problem only takes you one step closer to solving it. How you solve it, and how you keep doing this day after day going forward makes a lot of difference either way.

The truth is the moment it's technically possible to hack a car remotely, cars will be hacked remotely. We've had computers of all kinds for decades and couldn't manage to make them "hack-proof". Consoles are as close as it gets and I'm sure if they were as critical as a car they would have been thoroughly hacked by now.

Having any kind of "self driving" feature means safety critical systems (acceleration, braking, steering) can be controlled entirely by the car's computer. And having OTA updates means there is some link between that critical computer and the outside world. And in that outside world people managed to hack airgapped computers in a military nuclear facility. If only that facility was "a software company"... they could have CI/CDed the malware in their infrastructure.

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