Wait. They're not fixing this with a firmware update?

So, any radio station intern will be able to take out a city's worth of Mazdas moving forward?

Nice.

I've never seen a car stereo get a firmware update. Manufacturers seem to treat these as throwaway components. They're made once and forever sealed. Kind of crappy from the perspective of consumers and the environment.

I guess what I've heard about eg. Tesla is a counterexample.

Well hang on there! When the Camaro v5 first came out (2009) there was a pretty decent online community and what we discovered was dealers were completely unready to handle software updating and versioning. At the time, iPod/ iPhone/ general mp3 player software kept having breaking updates, so being able to obtain car stereo updates was important but impossible for large portions of the user base.

Which is how I wound up downloading 2 files from a person who apparently wrote the C# code for the radios and was saddened by the situation. The weirdest part was doing the upgrade: stick the files on two usb keys, turn the car on, stick the first key in the one port, remove it, open the driver side door as an indicator and then finish with the second key.

I've thought about that level of ... security every time I read about some malicious car hack.

> turn the car on, stick the first key in the one port, remove it, open the driver side door as an indicator and then finish with the second key

I'm reminded of the farcical firmware reset procedure for C by GE Light Bulbs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo

Though, in GE's defense, light bulbs do have a pretty limited interface.

That video made me laugh. It almost sounds like a parody of a reset procedure. Every time you expect it to be done, he comes back with another cycle of off for 2 seconds and on for 8 seconds.

It's also unfortunate that the dislike button stopped working on YouTube because I'd love to see how many people disliked that.

Using the Return Youtube Dislike extension tells me that it is sitting at 12k dislikes to the 11k likes.

Such a crazy process heh. I'm guessing it would cost too much to add a physical button for factory resetting?

When your input device is a car door...

-.-.-.-.-. or 1010101010, sounds right to me when you only have a 1-wire control. Though 10 signals/bits may be a bit excessive?

Though .-....-, Morse for RST, should have been enough.

My ford focus did! For free! Shocking, I know. They added Android Auto and CarPlay support.

There's at least a little bit of a spectrum between Tesla and the total dinosaurs.

My Subaru has received at least two OTA firmware updates.

I think the reason most people don't think their cars get firmware updates is because a lot of cars hide the wifi connection dialogs and update download controls behind three or four layers of menus, so if you don't know to look for it (and aren't especially interested in poking around through the menus of your head-unit), it's off by default and you don't know it's there.

The side effect of this is that many people won't set up the Wi-Fi, so OTA would be reliant on LTE releases, if the car has one.

tesla doesn't have wonderful software updates though...

The fixes they make are controversial and many times make things worse especially wrt the infotainment system.

for example, the current system is just SO broken I don't know where to start.

Ok, the USB audio system. You can listen to audio off of a USB flash drive. This is great because they came out with an expensive high fidelity sound system a few years back, and allowing FLAC or ALAC supported high quality uncompressed audio.

otoh the USB software is horrendously broken, and updates have frequently made things worse. reference: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comprehensive-usb-bu... (a thread with > 2000 comments)

Wow, hold on a second... This also means random changes won't be forced upon you and they need to make the effort to get it right the first time.

You’d hope that’s what it means but in practice they ship whatever they have by the deadline and often whatever they have means… “obscure bugs”

Mazda owner here. When I go in for standard maintenance the firmware will get updated if there's something available.

What Mazda seems to discourage is owners bringing in their cars for the update only. They also can't really diagnose issues with the Connect hardware (they didn't build it) so doing a complete unit swap was their only established procedure for a system problem. They eventually added more diagnosis when all of the people hacking their units were bricking things and then asking for a free replacement.

I worked at a place that did headunit software for like 15m. My understaning, most of the headunit software updates happen over cellular and aren't covered under the customers billing, the company eats those costs so they like those updates to be as small and as infrequent as possible.

Tesla maybe gets around this by using wifi when it's in the garage? Or perhaps the contracts on the tesla says that customers bare the cost of firmware updates that happen outside the service center setting.

> Tesla maybe gets around this by using wifi when it's in the garage? Or perhaps the contracts on the tesla says that customers bare the cost of firmware updates that happen outside the service center setting.

Tesla uses Wi-Fi when possible, but for urgent updates they will push them over cellular at their own expense.

Also, they somewhat have users paying for this by having the monthly $9.99 "premium connectivity" feature package. Though, it isn't required for the cellular connection to function for basic maps.

Jeep Cherokee does so periodically, but Mopar is relatively well known for having a high quality infotainment system. This may be generally true for any infotainment systems running Android Auto / Apple CarPlay because they need to keep up with the features there, which almost necessitates having a developer team which will almost necessitate putting them to use sometimes

Can't or won't? Is it really impossible for them to develop a process to do a firmware update at the dealer? Even if that involves removing the radio... How do they program the radios at the factory?

My Kia's infotainment system got a firmware update, but it was not OTA. I actually had to pay to order an SD card with the update - but it was well worth it as it added CarPlay support.

What size was the SD card? Was it read only, or could you format it and use it for something else later on? Just curious :)

This is really not true at all anymore. Mazda definitely does update their infotainment system. I actually upgraded my wife's 3 year old Mazda with CarPlay.

My Land Rover got an over-the-air update to add support for Amazon Alexa just the other day, completely out of the blue. It's not just luxury or tech cars that do this kind of thing these days.

FWIW, I would consider all Land Rover vehicles luxury vehicles.

I guess if you're in the UK they're just domestic vehicles you see everywhere, and they're treated as workhorses not luxury.

The Defender is an off road work machine. I don't know if they have some new shiny model to drive where a normal car would do.

Wouldn't that be the Range Rover now?

Range Rover is a type of Land Rover.

I get that but I don't think of Land Rovers as luxury oriented. It's specifically their Range Rover line of vehicles

Well, they're undoubtedly marketed differently, but IMHO it's a double-bluff.

Range Rover markets directly to upper-middle-class suburbanites, and show off the leather seats, fancy touchscreens and alloy wheels of shiny, clean cars.

Land Rover markets 'adventure', shows cars fording rivers and crossing deserts, and offers optional winch, expedition roof rack and ladder. But they still offer leather seats, fancy touchscreens and alloy wheels; and mostly sell to upper-middle-class suburbanites.

To me they seem like extremely similar products, predominantly targeting the same demographic, just with different marketing.

I just got a firmware update, actually. It was categorized as a recall, which spooked me before I realized what it actually was.

> Kind of crappy from the perspective of consumers and the environment.

This is also how you get subscription services to keep it updated.

my focus RS had an infotainment upgrade. it even dropped a file back on the USB stick which i then sent back to ford and it registered that the unit had been upgraded.

My 2017 Ford Fusion does over wifi.

It doesn’t even have to be an intern. You could set up a pirate radio station with a DAB/HD Radio transmitter on a frequently-listened station at an overpass and see what happens.

Risk was already there. Have you seen the way interns drive?

> So, any radio station intern will be able to take out a city's worth of Mazdas moving forward?

Well if the server exploded because someone passed a wrong get parameter I'm not blaming whoever that did it.

Apparently a normal firmware update isn't possible for anyone who already got hit by this, because it gets stuck in a reboot loop which prevents the firmware from being updated.

I think "take out" is unnecessarily hyperbolic language. It seems they're stuck on a radio station, not inoperable or dangerous.

Also, nav is broken, and presumably emergency broadcast features are hosed as well. I wonder about backup cameras, and various driver assist things.

If a Model 3 had an analogous bug, then everything from the windshield washers to the climate control and rear view mirrors would be borked (I'd guess phone-based unlock would be too, at a minimum.)

Many Priuses integrate parts of the power train into the radio. I suspect they'd have serious issues too.

Of course, what matters is how integrated all this stuff is in a Mazda. That, I don't know.

> Many Priuses integrate parts of the power train into the radio. I suspect they'd have serious issues too.

Priuses can display powertrain data on the screen (such as which engines are operating, whether regen is happening, etc.) but I have never seen anything in the screen on any Prius that actually sends control data to the powertrain.

> If a Model 3 had an analogous bug, then everything from the windshield washers to the climate control and rear view mirrors would be borked (I'd guess phone-based unlock would be too, at a minimum.)

Actually it's possible to phone-unlock and drive a Model 3 with the screen completely turned off or broken. I've done it.

> Many Priuses integrate parts of the power train into the radio. I suspect they'd have serious issues too.

I’m sorry, they do what now? Why would you even do that?

Well I used to be able to control the ABS on individual wheels with VAG cars (Audi, Bentley, Skoda & VW) in the mid 00's.

I could make a VAG car hand brake turn going into a corner all from a computer remotely, just by switching on the ABS braking on the rear wheel on the opposite side to a turn. I could control the throttle remotely as well.

Why are people shocked at the way these global corporations are treating security and privacy?

Its only their lawyers that are protecting them.

Indeed, it seems like an effective way for a radio station to "capture" more listeners!

WKW 93.4 FM, all ads, all the time.

What does that mean? Sent image files where? How did those image files impact car radios?

I suspect they are talking about this:

https://radiodns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Guidelines-o...

Essentially small images sent OTA that allow stations to "Brand" themselves on automotive receivers.

So a bug in the HD Radio app which has some very poor process architecture/sandboxing if it can take over the whole interface.

Good concept for a Black Mirror episode

Go go gadgetmobile

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/8/8e/Gadgetm...

I think they can also do useful things like traffic maps and album art over nrsc5

Goatse other people's radios is a terrible idea.

Advanced data services provide broadcasters with the ability to transmit information that may be unrelated to MPS, SIS or SPS. These services can carry any form and content that can be expressed as a data file or a data stream, including audio services. Examples of such services include (i) visual effects associated with MPS, SIS, or SPS services; (ii) multimedia presentations of stock, news, weather, and entertainment programming including audio, text and images; (iii) broadcast updates to in-vehicle systems; (iv) local storage of content for time shifting and later replay; (v) targeted advertising; (vi) traffic updates and information for use with navigation systems; and (vii) subscription or free-but-limited-access services using conditional access.

https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/docum...

SDR Receiver: https://github.com/theori-io/nrsc5

Wow goatse, now that’s something I haven’t heard in about a decade. For the curious, I wouldn’t google the image, not trying to be asshole…

Seems like a wide open gaping security problem if someone can goatse your car. What a huge hole that is.

I see what you did there, but I won't look at it.

And buffer overflows and RCE as well, I assume ;-)

Maybe they could use an RCE to patch the firmware.

Eventually some Mazda owner will get frustrated enough to actually do that.

I don't know the technical details of how it's encoded, but digital radio stations can embed metadata in their signal that the car radio can display. That includes text, like the station name, and also images, like a logo, that's usually shown next to the station name. I believe it's part of HD Radio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio.

HD radio can broadcast images for the radio station, etc. that is displayed when you are tuned to that channel.

I imagine this could be anything like song album art, station icon, etc. for any car that has more than the scrolling led type radio display

How does a radio station even send an image file? What does that mean? What is suppose to happen when a radio station sends an image file?

In newer cars with video displays and HD Radio capability, the screen can show a small image next to the song information. It's typically album cover art for the song that is playing, but a lot of stations just put their station logo up and keep it there.

https://blogmedia.dealerfire.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/56...

Satellite radio had this capability very early, and HD Radio seems to want to keep up with that.

The data itself is sent on a sideband data channel that rides along with the traditional FM channel. Lots of links to read up starting here: https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/HD_Radio_(FM)

The signal specification can be read here: https://www.sigidwiki.com/images/f/f6/HD_Radio_FM.pdf

It's also possible to decode this data with an RTL-SDR receiver:

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/displaying-live-weather-and-traffic-...

What's interesting is that this traffic map is also loaded on Mazda cars, but shown in a different application. Somehow the system searches for a HDRadio signal in the background to update this map from an independent receiver.

I've had AM radio on for long periods and then load this app, and the traffic map is up to date. I've also driven to a different city and the map is now showing the new city.

If you asked drivers "would you like a brand icon shown on your screen for the radio station, the trade-off is a couple bucks more expensive car and more opportunity for bugs to crash your radio" -- who would say yes? Does anyone actually want this "HD Radio" technology, did anyone ask for it?

Who are the car manufacturers (and radio standards setters for that matter) working for?

"Would you like a car that updates its entire control panel, unannounced, with a software upgrade and will hide familiar buttons on you when you need them the most?"

https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/1488030592880967680

Whilst a lot of people (myself included) agree the recent UX change is awful, it doesn't seem relevant to the GP.

Yes, my last car I specifically looked for HD Radio support. The metadata is nice to have, but the audio quality is genuinely much better. Especially on AM, where a lot of sports broadcasts still are, depending on the market.

And its where the stations hide their good content. it's no spotify of course, but a way more diverse offering on many stations hd2 and hd3 signals, still without ads on several as well.

Sure, your point stands if you pose it that way.

But if you pose it as seeing album art for music that you listen to (and titles!), that’s going to get a yes from a lot of people (myself included).

I believe moving to digital also allows stations to broadcast more channels. For instance, KUOW, the source of this bug, has KUOW-2 and KUOW-3 only accessible via HD Radio that broadcast things like the BBC news feed and classical music.

Of course, maybe you'd like to have that option without being exposed to logos.

Yes, I want HD Radio. In Los Angeles, KROQ's secondary HD channel plays KROQ as it existed in the 1980's, including some old jingles and such. I think it's such a cool idea.

HD radio is a lot more advanced than the old AM/FM stuff you may be used to.

I'm surprised you haven't seen this before. Even as a consultant way back in 2012, many basic rental cars had this feature. It shows album art and other metadata about the currently playing track or show. I believe it's part of HD radio.

At least that's the case in the USA. I seem to recall seeing the same in European vehicles as well.

Not everyone drives

The same issue occurred in th Boston area 2 years ago. A borked image file caused the system to go into a boot loop.

Had to get the unit replaced at the dealership.

When I had a 2016 Mazda, I regularly downloaded their firmware, which at some point came fairly frequently. Like other manufacturers, their dealer portal posts firmware upgrades along with other service bulletins, and occasionally the firmware leaks out from some of their dealers, so enthusiast would go on upgrade it by themselves.