• jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works
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    22 hours ago

    Cars don’t explode like in movies

    It’s also a huge vulnerability that modern cars have internet connections and could easily trigger the immobilizer or drive it into a wall

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      There are only a handful of models that use a drive-by-wire system where an electronic attack would let you do something like that (Teslas and some models of Humvee are the only ones I know right off I was wrong, both models I was thinking of would not allow this either. There’s only four models in the US where this would be possible.) - pretty much everything else still uses supplementary physical connections to prevent loss of control during a hardware failure. Loss of steering assist or activation of an immobilizer will cause your engine to shut down and your controls to be less responsive, but it does not cause you to lose control of a car and both have a long enough purely mechanical delay to allow you to safely stop the vehicle.

      There’s no way for a remote attacker to “drive your car into the wall” unless you’re using one of those very rare models. Even cars with lane assist are designed so that -mechanically- they cannot override user input.

      • jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        Seeing this coincidentally. I may be wrong about the immobilizer but even having one aspect of the car fail could cause issues if the person isnt expecting it, especially if they are already speeding. Also theres no saying if there could have been physical sabotage to the car or that he was driving something with issues like a recent honda (steering rack issues that cause them to lock up)

        • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          If you’re defending the idea this was him being killed by ICE - while I personally doubt it was (why would ICE care enough to do this elaborate conspiracy BS that almost failed when they could just, you know, shoot him) - that’s not really needed here, I’m not trying to make a case either way. I’m just pointing out that “hacking a car” can’t, outside of a handful of models, be used by a hacker as an automatic crash button. Even that example you linked to at worst just disabled the engine or the electronic brakes, which wouldn’t inherently cause someone to lose control of a car outside of those very few models (idk if you’ve ever had an engine die while you’re driving, but it really isnt a big deal to manage).

          Pretty much all modern cars cannot be forced to crash by a hacker - maybe, if they’re lurking and waiting until you’re speeding and then disable systems right as you’re turning it could increase the chance of you crashing, but modern cars are also extremely safe in an accident. Even in a tremendously bad incident like the above, everyone survived the impact - he only died because of the resulting fire. And again, he wasn’t the one driving, so his position in the car wouldn’t have been predictable… sorry, he wasn’t the owner of the car? This just doesn’t add up when ICE can just, you know, shoot people and get away with it.