Not if they short-sell the car-manufacturer stock first! Granted, that might increase their odds of being caught, but attackers don't have to be wise to be dangerous.
Depending on what can be hacked, another possibility would be a string of suspiciously-smooth thefts.
I mean, it depends on the person pulling the trigger, right? A sociopathic 14 year old from Bogota might not care.
The US and China go to war, over Taiwan say. This would be part of a general attack on the US, and would include things like the power grid, internet infrastructure, and anything else that can be disabled or turned against us.
Terrorists decide that 9/11 wasn't good enough, and they can do 1000x more damage, death and terror from the comfort of their computers.
Extortionists decide to leverage this capability to extort money from car companies.
More targeted killings would be motivated according to your thought.
This is just the top of my head. I'm sure there are others.
Other continues be something like NotPetya, localized cyberwar tactic that hits public internet and runs amuck. But to get from that to critical infra in US, let alone personal autos, is hard to picture.
It just seems like the degree of premeditation involved here would also come to the conclusion, given how over invested we are in our military, that is better to make it seem like the US is perpetually shooting itself in the foot rather than make it seems like the US has been shot. We tend to get all rambunctious when we know it was an attack, better to have us lose the war before we know we're fighting it.
When it comes to remote vehicle access I think you could do more damage carefully over the course of a decade than you could do rashly in a day.
There's no need for Tom Clancy 46-dimensional chess plots that involve hacking the Gibson.
The next time you see your neighbour driving poorly, ask yourself - are they a spy, wrecker, or saboteur? (/s)
“Because some people just want to see the world burn”, unfortunately.
The idea that someone would actually fly two commercial airliners into downtown manhattan to take out the World Trade Center was also pretty unlikely, circa 2000 and 2001.
I suspect many people in HN could whip up mass violence with drones if they wanted to. Luckily the people who can generally have better things to do.
Like many of the ideas in the book 1984, turning all the stoplights green at the same time in New York City was probably not possible in the 1960s. It is now.
Retrieving the gold is left as an exercise to the reader.
IMHO: if you want an entertaining movie, watch the 2003 movie. If you're planning a bank heist, the 1969 version is probably more informative. N.B.: I've never done a bank job.
I can't speak for the whole industry, but back when I was part of it, thats how our controllers worked. Admittedly, I don't think New York City was a customer.
I swapped an EJ22 out of a 2001 Subaru Impreza into an '86 BRAT. At least as of 2001, there were still a lot of discrete pairs of wires that a sufficiently savvy person (I.e., not me) could debug with a multimeter. Thank goodness. It was enough fun getting it running without involving CANBUS in the process.
I believe our 2005 Civic was largely discrete pairs of analog wires too, even if it was throttle by wire. It gave me very little electrical trouble.
Troubleshooting the headlights on my 2010 Suzuki SX-4 involved printing some 30 pages from TFM. The entirety of the wiring diagram for my '76 Triumph TR6 fit on three pages. We own a Willys CJ-2A, and the whole wiring diagram fits on one sheet. The wiring diagram for the circuits that actually make it run probably fits on an index card.
When you turn off the headlights in my wife's 2018 Impreza, there's a noticeable delay between turning the switch and the computer deigning to allow you to turn the lights off.
I know ABS implies computer modulated braking, but I don't think it implies the computer can brake without user input or override user input and not brake. Otoh, automatic emergency braking is standard on some vehicles and optional on many.
Computer controlled steering is currently rare, but is part of lane keeping assistance.
Glad you said "mostly". The Cybertruck is an exception, with full drive-by-wire. There may be others. If the 'truck is a hit (and it is) expect its ideas to spread.
My plan for the Land Cruiser is to install the engine and transmission from an early 2000s Mitsubishi Fuso. This will entail grafting the ECU and TCU from the Fuso into the Cruiser's wiring harness, and doing some transmission modifications to hook up the tailshaft to the Toyota transfer case. Should just about double fuel economy and improve driveability. I can't think of any reason I'd buy a newer vehicle, the "improvements" they offer just aren't worth the cost.
You sure about that, at least if someone has direct access to your car I'm guessing they could very easily clip something on that could control the car under particular conditions.
Look, if you want to really mess up a car all you need is a pair of needle nose pliers. Locate the brake lines where the hard line meets the soft line going to each caliper, and squash each hard line to crack it just enough that fluid starts to slightly weep out. When the driver first steps on the brakes in earnest the fluid will flow out, and eventually (maybe 5-10 braking events later) the brakes will no longer work.
Again, my threat model does not include someone targeting me specifically. If someone wants to hurt me or vandalize my property they're not gonna do it by writing some esoteric computer program. If you connect your car to the Internet the threat model needs to expand to include "bulk" attacks, which I suspect are actually much more likely.
Pretty sure they could get firmware updates for the ECU and TCU. There's probably somebody doing ECU tunes for more power / better efficiency / better noises, even if that's just tweaking the tables ajd even if there are no factory software updates. Electronicly controlled transmissions often have some updates available over their early service life, even if they're not well publicized or pushed. ODB-II is commonly used for that, although maybe the 1995 would need modules removed and rom chips replaced.
But really the "threat model" is about complexity, not malice. I'm not worried someone will try to hack my car. If they manage it, good on them. I am worried about a manufacturer preventing me from maintaining my cars. Newer cars are so tightly locked down that maintenance is unnecessarily difficult.
A malicious person could standup a fake 3g network, I guess. But LTE has strong mutual auth, so cars with 4g modems will be very hard to attack once 4g is dead. OTOH, 4g and 5g can more easily coexist: as I understand it, 5g can run with 4g compatible control protocol, with some slots 4g and some 5g depending on the needs of the mobile stations nearby, 2g and 3g needed a block allocated, so once the minimum size block was no longer well utilized, it's a waste of spectrum. This may mean 4g is kept alive a lot longer than 2g/3g.