Hacker News Reader

Comment by chaxor | Hacker News Reader

At least they're using ssh and not some home rolled garbage. If ssh uses keys and not small passwords, it's one of the most secure methods around to get access to a machine. Unfortunately far too many companies are just rolling their own extremely flimsy and insecure VPN programs these days.

View on HN

You are missing the point. Their engineers have the ability to ssh into your car. While you arr going 85mph on the freeway. That's by itself is scary af.

I get anxiety updating my bios at the best of times, I can't even imagine at speed.

I think the protocol used to access the moving vehicle is the least of the concerns here.

It definitely a near top concern. If they're doing a flimsy home spun thing then it's much more likely to be compromised. While the company being able to do this is enough to prevent me from buying a car from them, an insecure system that could be compromised means I believe the company should offer a recall on all cars. Being more secure doesn't mitigate the concerns, but it not being secure hightens them.

To be clear, neither is acceptable but it being secure is still a big issue.

I can only speak for German car companies, but their tech is incredibly secure, and multiple teams work on just making sure it is close to impossible to get access to anything digitally controlled in a car.

The thing with cars is that malicious actors usually can get physical access to it, which makes it an order of magnitude more difficult to secure. This is one of the main reasons car computers often seem so clunky.

A lot of this tech seems to consider the legitimate owner of the car doing DIY repairs as "malicious" as well, unfortunately.

I see your point, but modern cars are too complicated to allow tinkering anyway.

Besides, would you dare driving next to the guy that just installed random rom from xda?

I'm talking about simple stuff like authorizing additional keys, enabling remote lock/unlock without a stupid subscription, etc.

The rom on the car is way less of a concern to me than whatever the person had to drink or their road rage fueled tailgating...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com