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NHTSA to require vehicle to vehicle communications

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I saw this, and my initial reaction is positive. I've always thought if cars could act in a hive mind like state, accidents could be avoided and traffic alleviated. This goes hand in hand with self driving cars IMO.
 
Yea, I can't wait until people start hacking the system. Don't like the guy tailgating you? Send an event that an emergency stop is happening from your car causing his to slam on the brakes. There is no way they can properly secure this if every vehicle will participate.
 
Yea, I can't wait until people start hacking the system. Don't like the guy tailgating you? Send an event that an emergency stop is happening from your car causing his to slam on the brakes. There is no way they can properly secure this if every vehicle will participate.

Hacking the system to do that will most likely be illegal. On top of that, your car would have it's own sensors. So at best, your car would slow down a bit to keep some distance briefly. Then speed up when it sees no breaks. It will then report this data as a bug for evaluation and the guy doing it goes to jail. Though initially, the system will only give drivers warnings and that is it.
 
Hacking the system to do that will most likely be illegal. On top of that, your car would have it's own sensors. So at best, your car would slow down a bit to keep some distance briefly. Then speed up when it sees no breaks. It will then report this data as a bug for evaluation and the guy doing it goes to jail. Though initially, the system will only give drivers warnings and that is it.

While saying "Emergency Brake" might not be considered a protected first amendment speech (like fire in a crowded theater). But sending out truly wrong and distracting information could be defensible with the first amendment, so long as you are not trying to cause a situation where someone may become hurt.
 
While saying "Emergency Brake" might not be considered a protected first amendment speech (like fire in a crowded theater). But sending out truly wrong and distracting information could be defensible with the first amendment, so long as you are not trying to cause a situation where someone may become hurt.


Well first of all, they can make modifications of the system illegal. Similar to how the telecommunications act made esn cloning illegal for cellphones. Second of all, they can still pin you with reckless endangerment, obstruction of traffic and etc.

I can see the benefits of the connected car but how easy would it be to track every car's position with this? Not to be too much of a conspiracy guy but do we really need to help the intelligence services?

Because triangulating you through your cellphone or car's internet connection is somehow more difficult?
 
Well first of all, they can make modifications of the system illegal. Similar to how the telecommunications act made esn cloning illegal for cellphones. Second of all, they can still pin you with reckless endangerment, obstruction of traffic and etc.

Well, anyone that hacks the system is not going to go through their own car. They're going to go through someone else's that's been compromised.
 
Well, anyone that hacks the system is not going to go through their own car. They're going to go through someone else's that's been compromised.

In the example given, you are being tailgated by another car. The only way to make them stop tailgating you is if you use your car to send a signal. If your talking about hacking their car and sending such a signal, you would first have to get their identification number and then hack them. Doing that while driving is a bit tough, maybe with a second passenger. Though overall, I don't think hacking these systems would be easy and even harder hacking someone else's remotely. What they could even do is make the system read only with no remote access and any updates would be a hardware replacement of the modular computer system. Then hacking would be impossible.

Now you can hack the cloud system. but it is only a matter of time till you get caught. And since there is no money in it, professional hackers are not going to risk going to jail over stopping some tailgating.
 
In the example given, you are being tailgated by another car. The only way to make them stop tailgating you is if you use your car to send a signal. If your talking about hacking their car and sending such a signal, you would first have to get their identification number and then hack them. Doing that while driving is a bit tough, maybe with a second passenger. Though overall, I don't think hacking these systems would be easy and even harder hacking someone else's remotely. What they could even do is make the system read only with no remote access and any updates would be a hardware replacement of the modular computer system. Then hacking would be impossible.

Now you can hack the cloud system. but it is only a matter of time till you get caught. And since there is no money in it, professional hackers are not going to risk going to jail over stopping some tailgating.

Spoofing wirelss devices is incredibly simple. You could make a phantom car or multiples that don't really exist.
 
Spoofing wirelss devices is incredibly simple. You could make a phantom car or multiples that don't really exist.

When the car realizes that it was inaccurate, you can have the car take a picture and identify the license plate of the car not matching the signal. So again they would get caught. Now multiple cars might be a bit tricky because how would they spoof the direction of the signal? Especially if they put antennas on each side of the car and make them directional. And say hypothetically they do, when your other sensors notice that they would report it.

On top of that, if each car has the unique identifier built into the hardware of the car. And the signal is sent encrypted, then decrypted at the cloud, you would have no way of spoofing it. Even if you somehow did spoof it, there would be authentication and the system would realize that a car exists in 2 places at once. Which again would trigger a flag.

At end of the day, the effort would not be really worth it.