While I strongly support free speech and believe security researchers should be given some extra latitude when appropriate, what I saw was not at all appropriate. I saw two well respected security researchers sitting in a room like Beavis and Butthead laughing and remotely disabling a vehicle on a multi-lane interstate highway, like it was a big joke. The reporter in the Jeep literally says "This is dangerous" and asks urgently for help. This all filmed and posted to Wired for the world to see, like they are proud of it.

Before working with computers I drove tractor-trailers for a while and was lucky to achieve a million-mile safe driving award. I have a pretty good idea of the dangers here and I know that stretch of road well, I've crossed it many times. I know from experience that a car stopped in the middle of a multi-lane interstate is one of the most dangerous situations you can be in. I've had people hit me who didn't see my huge trailer with flashers on and warning triangles out on a sunny day - it happens quite often. I've seen dozens of people killed in situations exactly like this. You see it coming and a random driver just plows into the stopped vehicle.

I exercised my judgement and decided to phone the local Highway Patrol office. I've read the negative comments and I disagree, I still think it was the correct thing to do. If you are a researcher and you do something this dangerous, and are foolish enough to then post it on a high-traffic site like Wired, I think you forfeit any right to a discreet warning and you deserve to have the police show up demanding answers to some tough questions.

Important research but very poorly tested. Wired and Chrysler (research was funded by Chrysler?) legal teams would not like the contents of this video.

edit: wired's link to video, jump to 2:00: http://dp8hsntg6do36.cloudfront.net/55ad80d461646d4db7000005...

And that was while the security researchers caused the radio to blare so loud that he couldn't hear them on the other end of the phone. The more I see, the more I think they were really negligent in how they planned this out, and I was already firmly in that camp.

What I see is a vehicle slowed considerably, but at least nominally over the legal minimum speed of 40 MPH on highways, and without the driver being able to accelerate on his own. He's travelling in the rightmost lane, explicitly with his hazard lights on. This is not an unusual occurrence on highways. He's then told that to regain control he needs to stop and restart the car, which he does while remaining in motion.

I was surprised, since this is quite different from the way it's being talked about here, as if he was stopped in the middle of the freeway. See GGP comment about "a car stopped in the middle of a multi-lane interstate."

That's not what happened here.

  Driver: "It says 43 miles an hour, but it's not really that fast."
  [voiceover omitted]
  Driver: "Guys, I'm stuck on the highway."
  Researcher A: "I think he's panicking."
  Researcher A: "He's not going to be able to hear us with that radio.  So loud."
  Driver: "Guys, I need the accelerator to work again."
  Researcher A: "The accelerator..."
  Researcher B: "It won't work!  You're doomed!"
  Driver:  "Seriously [beep] dangerous, I need to move."
  Researcher A: "You gotta turn the car off!"

This discussion has been distorted and sensationalized, and it has not been based on observable recorded facts.

I don't think this discussion has been distorted. It's based on the information they provided. They put a vehicle on a public highway traveling at the faster end of what's legal in the US on public roads, and then removed a large portion of the drivers ability to control the vehicle. It's unclear whether this affected the steering or brakes, which in a modern vehicle would both be power assisted, generally through the vacuum system of the vehicle. The vacuum is provided by the engine, so if the engine was actually off (which is unknown, but I think it's more likely they just forced the car into neutral), then they removed a large portion of his ability to control the car.

The bottom line is that they put a driver in a situation not only unsafe to himself (which they could have gotten consent to), but unsafe for the other drivers on the road. They did not have consent from the other people on the road to do this (indeed, it's not possible they could have), and if what they purport to happen in the article and video did happen, then they endangered those people. I've seen accidents from stopped cars being hit by others. If the highway is busy enough, the initial accident isn't even necessarily the largest damage, but it moves vehicles into even more obstructing positions and causes follow-on accidents.

https://www.google.com/search?q=stalled+car+accident&tbm=isc...

Without such event present in the footage, car manufacturers can just say "Meh - no big deal". And continue recklessly risking lives by manufacturing unsafe cars without air gap between CAN bus and Internet.

Remember, it's the car manufacturers that are the bad guys here, not the white hats... And just think how hard was this decision. It's a choice between risking lives and having footage that doesn't catch attention and thus allows car manufacturers to continue making unsafe cars with horrible security vulnerabilities. Amazing.

Your argument is ludicrous, because you're attempting to cast the actors as either good or bad. IMHO they are guys with a good idea and motivation who did a bad thing.

edit: as per the article "researchers already did test these exploits in controlled environments and presented these tests to auto manufacturers. Said tests were dismissed by said manufacturers.".

If optics is your justification for this, then perhaps having these two irresponsible researchers arrested would bring even more attention to this.

>edit: as per the article "researchers already did test these exploits in controlled environments and presented these tests to auto manufacturers. Said tests were dismissed by said manufacturers.".

Where do you see that in the article? Only thing I read was manufacturers downplaying a wired-in attack they demoed.

Yep.

> Where do you see that in the article? Only thing I read was manufacturers downplaying a wired-in attack they demoed.

No "air gap" between "CAN bus and Internet" equals vulnerable.

We know that. Auto manufacturers know that.

Yet they dismiss the possibility of a hack and continue producing unsafe vehicles. And the trend is toward more vulnerabilities.

I was to lazy to search a direct quote, but here it is now: "Miller and Valasek represent the second act in a good-cop/bad-cop routine. Carmakers who failed to heed polite warnings in 2011 now face the possibility of a public dump of their vehicles’ security flaws.".

In this article it mentions how Chrysler is working with them and has developed a patch, indicating that they did not dismiss previously done tests. So basically saying the opposite of what I take your point to be.

Oh really, can you point to the responsible tests that were done in the past that proved inconsequential necessitating this reckless alternative? Or are you just inventing that the car manufacturers would ignore this and somehow the story would just go away?

Researchers perform controlled experiments. Controlled experiments are ignored. Researchers opt for more damning (though less controlled) experiments to further prove their point, and now they're suddenly the bad guys here.

Much of the commentary here focuses on the recklessness of the highway test and doesn't weigh in too heavily on who the bad guys are.

I think people mostly find the idea of remotely exploitable and controllable cars so terrible that there isn't anything to discuss about that aspect of it, it's nearly universally considered unacceptable (hence the epic thread about the side issue).

Maybe try reading the comments without imputing a side that the writer is taking.

It wouldn't have been difficult to do this right. Cops love drama and publicity. It wouldn't have taken much convincing to get them on board, and the video would gained a lot of credibility.

However, this doesn't change the fact that vulnerabilities were demonstrated, nor does it change the implication that auto manufacturers are excessively sluggish about security patches on things that can and do kill people on a regular basis. Even an imperfectly-conducted demonstration like this particular case is preferable to such a demonstration not occurring at all.

> And just think how hard was this decision

Given that they did the easy thing, it wasn't very hard at all.

I don't exactly condone the ethics (or lack thereof) of the researchers, either, but if that's the only way to get proper attention (after previous, more polite and reasoned attempts were simply dismissed by manufacturers), then so be it.

Just because automakers are seemingly keen on ignoring security vulnerabilities does not justify putting people's lives at risk. And let's face it – a multi-ton vehicle that is not entirely in its driver's control puts lives at risk in just about any situation. The reason you and others argue that the demo's methodology is effective is precisely because of the risks involved; not in spite of them.

It is the responsibility of researchers to demonstrate risks without exercising the extent of those risks. Imagine if virologists regularly demonstrated communicability risk by injecting humans with disease outside of the lab.

So condemn the auto manufacturers for putting hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of lives at risk instead of yammering about a couple of nerds who put at most 2 vehicles in probably-nonfatal danger in a worst-case scenario.

And as busy as that highway was in the video, it was far more than just 2 vehicles, especially if one of those vehicles was the 18 wheeler.

At the very least they could have done this on a less busy stretch of highway that had a wide shoulder and with control vehicles in front and behind with paramedics at the ready (just like a movie production that is shooting on public streets). Instead the researchers and the journalist chose to be reckless.

Nobody's saying you can't. I certainly do (I strongly disagree with the researchers' obstruction of communication between themselves and their test subject).

My only point is that there's a massive difference in scale between a couple dented fenders and hundreds of thousands of dead/maimed innocents.

We're talking about someone coasting uphill with absolutely no braking whatsoever. There's plenty of reaction time in such situations (as I happen to know firsthand, as was the case when my SUV ran out of gas and I had to coast a quarter-mile over a hill to get to the next offramp while merging from the fast lane to the far right at 70MPH). Even for semis, the reporter's car wouldn't mean having to slam on the brakes. Not to mention that the uphill helps with stopping.

The story would be different if the researchers slammed the car's brakes. If that were the case, then yes, death would be possible. That wasn't the case.

No intellectual dishonesty here. Just thorough examination of the situation as described by the author of the article.

Agreed, the researchers deserve some criticism, but let's not lose sight of the forest for these two goofball trees.

That's mere conjecture. And it's an assertion you could easily test by first doing the remote hack in a controlled environment (e.g. a racetrack) and seeing if automakers respond before trying this on an actual freeway!

The findings before physical tests (identifying cars with a lack of airgapping or other basic security measures) were also reported to Cadillac (as one example among others); said findings were basically dismissed with a "well we've already released a newer Escalade model with some more security features, so whatever".

This isn't to mention that the wired exploits should've been enough to at least spark some level of concern.

First, there's no indication in the article that the researchers or Wired presented the remote windshield wiper hack to the car's manufacturer and that they subsequently ignored it.

Second, there is plenty of indication that the exact opposite is true. The remote windshield wiper hack occurred this June, whereas the article states that they've been working with Chrysler on this for nearly nine months and that Chrysler released a patch prior to the publication of this article.

Third, the Cadillac anecdote isn't really relevant here. For starters, it looks like they were contacted by Wired, not the researchers, so it's unclear whether they were contacted before the dangerous freeway demonstration took place. And while the mention of the newer model is a bit odd, the statement also mentions devoting more resources and hiring a new cyber-security officer, making it unfair to characterize it as a "whatever" response.

Sure, it'd be nice if Cadillac was a little more proactive here, but keep in mind that the researchers hacked a Jeep (made by Chrysler), NOT a Cadillac (made by GM). The researchers think the Cadillac is also vulnerable based on its feature set, but absent a specific flaw to patch and given the short amount of time since the initial demonstration (less than two months), it's unclear what GM is supposed to do here.

Also, it's worth noting that the root flaw here - a hole in UConnect - is not limited to Chrysler. The article mentions tracking and surveilling GM vehicles, too (particularly Dodge), which makes sense, seeing as a lot of recent Dodge vehicles have UConnect as well (per http://www.driveuconnect.com/features/uconnect_access/packag...).

> For starters, it looks like they [Cadillac] were contacted by Wired, not the researchers, so it's unclear whether they were contacted before the dangerous freeway demonstration took place.

The article doesn't actually say that. Infiniti was contacted by Wired according to the article, but the initiator of Cadillac's response isn't specified (as far as I can tell).

If they were contacted in the same manner as Infiniti, then it's implied that said contact happened after the wireless hack, since the Infiniti contact involves a notification that the researchers' predictions were "borne out" in at least one of the three of them (in this case, Chrysler).

It's a shame because this is an incredible story and the work they did was great, but what a completely reckless stunt they pulled. Totally unnecessary too, the story would have been just as effective if the demo happened on a test track or empty parking lot.

These people did the exact opposite. They put others in potentially mortal danger.

They could have killed someone's daughter, son, mom or dad.

Stop and think about that for 10 minutes before you continue posting with this unreasonable point of view. Would your mom, dad or siblings life be worth this test? Imagine they collided with this car and died. Close your eyes and imagine that for a moment. Imagine receiving that call. Going to the hospital. Seeing the, all torn-up and suffering befor they die due to the injuries.

And then you find out it was due to two fuckers who thought it'd be funny/interesting/whatever to disable a car remotely.

Imagine that.

Although I do agree with you, I modded you down and the GP up in this case because appeals to emotion aren't the answer. Your post is a form of the "If it saves just one child" thought-ending pattern.

Hundreds of thousands of potential deaths at the hands of vulnerable vehicles versus maybe a dented bumper or two. I'll take the latter, please.

That doesn't seem to be true; Chrysler (the singular manufacturer involved) have, after being alerted to the hack prior to this report, already issued a patch. The researchers are practicing responsible disclosure, have the co-operation of the manufacturer, and are going public with the details at Blackhat next month.

This Wired piece is NOT part of that responsible vulnerability disclosure, it's a teaser to hype up their blackhat talk. It was not necessary to get this piece in Wired to save "hundreds of thousands" of lives. I guess you could argue that the vividness of this imagery will encourage people to follow through on getting their Jeeps patched, so there's that, I suppose.

Since you've repeatedly made this claim, do you have a link to back up the assertion that there are manufacturers who were ignoring this research who will now pay attention because of the crazy stunt Wired pulled?

Perhaps you should educate yourself before saying stupid, reckless things. The claims of the article are no defense.

If someone prefers people making stupid and reckless arguments to other people civilly pointing out that those arguments are stupid and reckless, I'm not concerned about their perception of me.

Or is basing one's statements on the subject matter alone only valid when you happen to agree with it?

Game, set, match.

Angry mobs are dangerous and volatile and can push prosecutors to overreact. And prosecutors and politicians love to overreact when it comes to hacking.

Imagine: you're a local and you're trying to call the police. But, you can't, because the number is busy. Or you wait forever on hold, because people on the internet are angry about a reckless driving incident that happened weeks ago and that the police already know about.

OP called the police, that's enough. They know about it now. If you want to express your opinion, write the editor of Wired or, if you're really angry, the local district attorney.

The fact you have included their phone number seems to me like you are instigating some sort of lynch mob.

If you actually though it was an issue you would have privately contacted them without telling the world.

Very childish.

This is a big story that the appropriate authorities will be looking at anyway.

I just sat back and tried to estimate (since of course, I don't have a CB in my car and can't follow traffic details like a trucker) but I'd guess I've driven past at least 5 fatalities -- and that's just fatalities I've noticed (body on stretcher, read about it on the news later, etc)

Emphasis in too long, because this is the reason why road signs announce dangerous sections of a road with even miles in advance.

That was rash. You called the police within an hour of reading this article? You didn't think it's possible the writer is embellishing or exaggerating the danger he was in here? As of right now, everything they've done has been done in good faith to try to point out the need for extra security.

Also, if they get arrested, even convicted of a crime, then what? You have two extremely angry researchers who know how to hack your car, and what, you're hoping some jail time might help them see the error of their ways and use more caution in the future? You can't see any potential problems if one of them feels vindictive about being jailed over your phone call when they weren't trying to do anything wrong in the first place?

EDIT: Formatting.

1: http://dp8hsntg6do36.cloudfront.net/55ad80d461646d4db7000005...

Making factual statements contrary to how a situation was reported by those involved is fraught with pitfalls you can't anticipate, from things you don't know about. Until there's careful investigation, or the people involved recant or make factually impossible statements, you should be careful about making assumptions.

In any case, their reported actions are what people are upset about. If someone makes false statements about illegal activity and it results in the police showing up, they have only themselves to blame.

I understand it's tempting to see a single bit of evidence and want to use it to invalidate an entire narrative, but is it so hard to accept that while editing could have made a situation less dangerous seem more dangerous, the inverse could be true as well? We really have no authoritative source of what happened other than the story put forth. The story may indeed be fabricated or subject to hyperbole in parts, but unless you have a source beyond what's here, you are not qualified to make that assessment from the little evidence presented.

But putting many lives in danger is considered acceptable behavior by security researchers? Does it actually matter that it was security researchers? Do security researchers working on banking software need to steal a million dollars in order to prove that they've found an issue? Would calling the police be acceptable in that situation?

Actual outrage is acceptable when there's actual danger. Calling the cops on a loud neighbor might not be acceptable, but calling the cops on a neighbor firing a gun in the general direction of your house certainly would be.

We don't know, for sure, what happened. There might be some creative license in the journalism. There might be some omission of them talking to authorities (even if someone called the highway patrol and they said "oh, we don't know about this," all it proves is there's bureaucracy at the highway patrol). etc.

Calling the cops is invoking a powerful and hard-to-control force. Unless you think that the cops and the legal system are capable of talking to people fairly and understanding security research and making sense of tech journalism and reaching a reliably just outcome, there are better ways to exert your outrage.

For instance, the researchers are very well known in the security community. They're not rogues or mobsters or fugitives. If they recklessly endangered lives, we can pressure them to turn themselves in to the legal system.

I happen to have more faith in the ability of the hacker community to fairly figure out what happened than the legal system to fairly figure out what happened. If I shouldn't, then we have a serious problem as a community.

1. You don't trust the police/legal system.

2. You trust our own community more.

Not saying I agree or disagree, but there are a LOT of people who would really disagree with this, and a lot more who would think that someone saying "why involved the actual people the public has chosen to deal with this, we can deal with it ourselves" would be very wrong.

I don't like the fact that I trust self-policing by any community (even my own) more than the institution that is supposed to be doing policing. But whether I like it doesn't affect things.

I agree that it is important for us, as a free society, to fix policing. In the meantime, the best way to minimize injustice is not to invoke police when there is no immedate threat that can't be otherwise solved.

The police and judicial system sometimes have conflicting incentives as well, but at least they are aligned more with the public good than ours are. There are laws and they are, for the most part, rewarded for enforcing them.

Of course they do. They can call the highway patrol or 911 and report a disabled vehicle. Let's imagine how that call would go.

  911: 911, What's your emergency?
  Driver: Hi, there was a vehicle travelling slowly on the freeway with its emergency flashers on, I had to switch lanes.
  Pause...
  Driver: Hello?
  911: Sorry, I was waiting for you to finish. Was there any other information? Did the driver or occupants appear to be in distress?
  Driver: I don't think so, he was alone and appeared to be talking to someone, perhaps on hands-free, or maybe On-Star?
  911: 911 is for emergencies only, in the future please report events of this type to local authorities' non-emergency number accessible via 411. Goodbye.

I would like to think that a call to 911 with more information (which of course a fellow driver wouldn't have) would be handled differently:

  911: 911, What's your emergency?
  Driver: Hi, someone on the freeway has purposefully disabled their vehicle in a location without shoulders, and is slowing while driving, impeding traffic.  I'm not sure if the power brakes or steering are functioning, but the driver is definitely not in full control of the vehicle.
  911: We've dispatched an officer to your location.  Has there been an accident yet?  Has the driver recovered control of the vehicle?

And tossing chocolate bars into your neighbor's campsite in hopes that the angry bear will wreck their stuff is just not cool.

Unless the unruly bear is these security researchers, the fleeing campers are other security researchers in the same field, and their fleeing is them correctly assessing that some LEA is going to be taking down any bears nearby that even twitch wrong after this.

Bad actors ruin it for everyone.

You seem to think that because the police are theoretically under democratic oversight, that one can safely interact with cops as though the nominal rules of engagement will restrict them, but even if - in the long run - it is possible to rein them in, the law enforcement system we actually have right now is unpredictable, unjust, and unsafe.

If you distrust the police to the degree that you think even if your actions weren't illegal you will still have negative consequences from interacting with them, definitely don't do the above.

When someone's actions extend to endangering the public to the degree we see here (which I think is obvious once you've watched the video), they are past any good will I would have extended them in not contacting the police for fear of an overreaction. Their clear disregard for public safety is reason enough for me.

Additionally, on the chance that it was entirely intentional and they are counting on the media and possibly even law enforcement response to help make this an issue, they they definitely don't need our restraint, and nor do they want it.

It does not matter that we theoretically have democratic oversight. In practice, what we have is a system where cops can do whatever they think fit and expect to get away with it. They are armed and dangerous; it is not safe to interact with them. It is not a good idea to call them, or to talk with them if someone else calls them, because they - the cops - have a clear disregard for public safety when it is counter to their own interests.

If I was robbed, I would call the police. If I saw someone waving a gun around in public, I would call the police. If I saw someone using a car as a weapon, I would call the police. If I see a situation where people are endangering the public and someone might get hurt, I would call the police. Not doing so when I clearly knew I should would make me feel somewhat responsible for any negative outcomes otherwise.

I'm not really interesting in continuing a discussion where the other side's position seems to be "the police are racist scumbags and they will ruin your life with the slightest contact, so don't call them on criminals." You might find that characterization unfair, but then again, you're the one over-generalizing using large media events as evidence instead statistics.

Edit: Removed reference to ad-hominem, which wasn't factually correct.

While I agree with much of the rest of what you right in that comment, this is not accurate: overgeneralizing a negative stereotype of someone other than the other party in a debate isn't "pulling an ad hominem".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

The cops can wreck your house, break your stuff, take your money, shoot your dog, deprive you of your liberty, and - if they think they can get away with describing you as a threat - shoot you dead. Even if you spend the time and money it would take to prove in court that all of this activity was illegal and unjustified, most of the time you'll fail, and even if you succeed you'll never get anything back.

I don't trust hackers or cops, but I can sure as hell see which one is the bigger threat.

Meanwhile hackers can break into the control systems for the power grid and shut down electricity, causing major damage. They can open or close hydroelectric dams, causing flooding and death. They can control hospital systems and kill or injure patients. They can control the airplane you're riding on while sitting in their seat. And all of these have been demoed at security conferences I've been to. I've seen these all in person.

There's a lot of physical harm that hackers can do. Sure, with a cop it's more personal since they're standing there in front of you pulling the trigger and a hacker doesn't even have to see your face.

Love them or hate them, both hackers and cops exist for a reason and are not going anywhere any time soon. One of the reason hackers exist is to point out dangerous security flaws like this. One of the reasons cops exist is because sometimes hackers are just as dangerous as the actions they're trying to draw attention to.

It also should be noted (since nobody else has raised this point) that some people within the police force likely read Wired anyway. So complaining about the police involvement for a piece posted to a popular news site is like moaning that your boss reads your Twitter feed.

IMO, the danger to the public caused by the researchers somewhat-controlled exploit is utterly dwarfed by the danger Jeep/uConnect is causing by directly connecting its cars to the internet. If the researchers are successful in getting car manufacturers to remove features like this entirely, the net result will ultimately save lives.

The article claims that the transmission was cut on a section of the freeway with no shoulder, so I'm curious how being stuck in the middle of the freeway translates to "slowing down and eventually driving off onto a grass shoulder." (And just because something "isn't the craziest thing I've seen" doesn't mean it isn't dangerous)

With or without shoulder, a stalled automobile is an everyday occurrence that drivers must absolutely watch and be prepared for. It wasn't the safest thing to do, but it isn't outside the normal range of "dangerous" events that one will experience on their commute daily, often more than once daily. IMO it doesn't increase the danger nearly as much as traffic patrol conducting a routine traffic stop on the freeway. If we're prepared to accept traffic patrol on busy freeways, then I don't think it's justified to treat a rare, even if foolish demonstration such as this one as anything more than a nuisance.

I agree that it probably presented some level of danger to the public, but I maintain that (i) the added danger was small relative to the normal everyday danger of driving with humans; and (ii) the media exposure they've achieved by doing this on a public road has the potential to pressure Chrysler to remove tens of thousands of hazards (read: vulnerable Jeep Cherokees) from the road, which could ultimately reduce danger and save lives. It's not clear-cut when you're dealing with a vendor who chooses to ignore and/or litigate upon an initial disclosure instead of fix their product.

People who routinely test things that have the capability for real harm learn to take precautions for as many of the the things you don't think off as you can. For example, the Mythbusters are routinely testing things with cars and other bits of machinery that can cause physical harm if something goes wrong. They also routinely retire to abandoned airforce bases, remote locations, and the salt flats to test things.

But perhaps a little more objectively, there's certainly a moral hazard here; if every security researcher did this on public roads it'd likely be chaos. An appropriate response, IMO, would be for the police to make a phone call and tell them not to do it again.

It's actually not that different than pure software security research. You don't show a POC for your new DNS exploit by doing it against Comcast or AT&T public DNS servers without expecting some blowback. You set up a test environment.

The danger of a car having its transmission crap out on the freeway is non-zero, yes. On the other hand, they explicitly cut a vehicle's transmission on the freeway. The danger for the people in the immediate area of this vehicle was increased because the situation (a cut transmission) went from "maybe it will happen" to "it is definitely happening." At that point, whether or not an accident happened depended entirely on the skill and attention of the drivers around this vehicle something completely out of the control of the researchers.

Not the highway.

1: http://dp8hsntg6do36.cloudfront.net/55ad80d461646d4db7000005...

Demoing it on a test track with no other vehicles and a volunteer driver with helmet and roll cage -- that'd be acceptable, maybe, with suitable safeguards.

But doing it on the open highway with unaware third parties driving past, merely telling the test guinea pig "not to lose control" while being blasted with cold air and loud noise, having the controls disabled, and visibility impaired? That's gross recklessness with public safety. (Here's a clue: you could have put me in that car and given me all the warning in the world and I could not guarantee maintaining control or not causing a potentially fatal accident at 70mph under those conditions.)

You shouldn't run experiments on big powerful machines in public places where you can't keep by-standers out. Gross ethical breach. I just hope the journalist is exaggerating or making things up.

Had someone died you might (in countries which have it) get corporate manslaughter on a company that ignored security warnings. You absolutely would on the researchers and the journalist for their reckless disregard for the lives of others.

(*) without risking lives there wouldn't have been a video documenting these life-threatening vulnerabilities in the cars.

I think it's 100% OK to test on a private car on a private track.

Was it a hacker? Nope, just a dumb mechanic that got trash deep into the air intake during a routine oil change.

How many (dumb mechanics)*(routine oil changes) are there in this country? Five-Six orders of magnitude more than auto hackers, which is why I don't see any harm in one more (where the driver knew ahead of time it was going to happen).

Here's the good test: since humans were involved, how did they present this to their ethical review board?

I'm pretty confident the answer would be "what's an ethical review board?".

These people, on the other hand, knowingly and deliberately disabled a car on a highway. Yes, they had a plan, but they are still running their little experiment on other unwitting drivers on the highway. I don't consider the manner in which they ran their test to be ethical; it should have been performed on a closed track.

You can't just waive it away because other risk is more dangerous across the entire nation. Under that standard: One little murder is a rounding error compared to the 2.5 mil who die each year.

What would contacting the researchers achieve? They arbitrarily did the experiment in a public highway "to make the headline more shocking".

As much as I support any kind of security research, and as much as I support getting the attention of people to raise awareness, contacting the authorities was the correct move; a public highway is not a research lab without the proper permission from authorities.

There is even a bigger problem. These researchers, even if they were negligent, are far more at risk of legal punishment for creating a small risk for the sake of increasing safety standards overall than the people who choose to cut security funding and put magnitudes more people at risk for the sake of making more money.

Isn't it odd that we have a legal system where the ones attempt to expose and fix the problem for the sake of safety are facing far greater legal trouble than those who knowingly allowed for the problem to first occur due to increasing profits?

But as someone who says the car manufacturer ought to face legal consequences for failing to fix a remotely exploitable stall-out in a timely manner (even without demonstration of anyone being harmed), I also say that people who fuck with moving cars on the road are a menace as well.

http://www.lawyerinlongbeach.com/Torrance-DUI-Attorney.html

Security researchers should only be liable for potential risks if we manage to hold those companies for potential risks.

If we fail to do the latter it's quite unfair to let individuals bear the brunt of legal enforcement.

What about this "experiment" could not be done in controlled environment on a track… or a country road… or an empty parking lot.

I suppose we could just have infectious disease researchers set up shop on a street corner by this logic. Whatever! It's just a small risk! They're doing it for the sake of increasing safety standards!

If these guys want to be regarded as researchers, they need to act like them and be accountable like them. No ethics committee would ever approve a test like this.

WTF are you talking about? There is no the IRB.

Better?

The people who "choose to cut security funding" (I'm assuming you mean congress?) acted within the bounds of the law and within their power as elected officials. They broke no laws and your disagreement with the results does not make them criminals.

I don't know if these researchers broke the law. All that's happening now is they are being investigated. If they did break the law, then it seems to me perfectly logical that they would be in "far greater legal trouble" than someone who didn't.

TL;DR it's not odd that someone who broke the law is in more legal trouble than someone who didn't

Not conducting this demonstration on a public highway would also have been a much less aggressive and thoughtful move, not to mention less dangerous.

Their test-engineers don't say "hey, we're going to do some stuff, but try not to kill anyone".

Gross negligence.

Perhaps you are simply unaware of how dangerous the situation was? Several experts (ex-truckers) have described how they have seen people killed in circumstances like this. If you're being intellectually honest, that should inform your responses.

Reminds me of people who will call the police on a loud neighbor instead of just, you know, talking to them first.

The driver was clearly distressed and they were just laughing it up.

This has no bearing on the original issue ('Calling police on security researchers'), but I'm just saying that you can't debate nicely with everyone.

So, you don't care about the fact that this experiment on public roads could have killed people? Just because it's for security research it's ok to recklessly endanger lives? What Wow's me is your cavalier attitude, I'm glad he informed the police and I hope they face repercussions. What they did needlessly endangered people's lives and public safety to add a sensational bit to a story, I find that way more "aggressive" than informing the proper authorities of those actions.

> they cut the transmission. [...] Immediately my accelerator stopped working. As I frantically pressed the pedal and watched the RPMs climb, the Jeep lost half its speed

In what world do we not call the police on this kind of behavior?

nothing novel there in terms of having to have some "new" TPM. Just OEMs choose to lock down their boot chain. Probably most secure boots are minimally implemented to only support the use case of secure/trusted boot (device/chip/OEM key) xor untrusted boot (no key).

If both are supported, whatever functionality that relies on OEM firmware or chain of trust would be disabled if it is an untrusted boot (like fastboot oem unlock for some android devices) situation.

May be tricky to enable certain desirable/required features if user wants to run their own firmware.

>I have yet to hear of a system that allows the user to directly authenticate software/firmware at the hardware level. Is anybody working on research of this nature? Or are there insurmountable problems with this approach?

I think chromebooks/chromeOS folks have been looking at this. Not sure of the current state of things.

p.s. TPMs kind of suck if they are not able to be updated OTA.

Who cares what their job title is? They deliberately blocked visibility and then cut the transmission of a vehicle being driven on a public road in traffic. That is well into the territory of criminal negligence.

I agree with what others have already said: Since nobody was actually hurt he should have contacted the researchers to make his point.

The right way to do this would have been for the researchers to call the police up front and arrange a demonstration on a closed road with police escort. That would have lent the video more credibility and shielded the researchers from liability, while addressing any concerns about safety or ethics.

We are here not an intellectual debate club were people take pro and contra sides and points are distributed based on the rigor of the argument, but discussions around here are about real world problems.

And somebody calling the cops on security researchers just because he read an article on the intern is in my view highly questionable behavior for somebody familiar with the tech community.