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Comment by dcposch | Hacker News Reader

> Lawshae says the attacks, which can open every door in a building, are possible because of a command injection vulnerability in a LED blinking lights service.

> "A command injection vulnerability exists in this function due to a lack of any sanitisation on the user-supplied input that is fed to the system() call," Lawshae says.

This looks like the latest in "internet of things" idiocy. Things that were once simple, but which now inexplicably run Linux.

This is how you get critical security failures from an "LED blinking lights service" or a home thermostat that bricks itself one morning after an auto update.

Its also how you get cars that can be crashed by a 4chan troll 1000 miles away, over the network, because of a bug in the entertainment system.

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-high...

Just Say No to needless complexity. Just because you can give your fridge an IP address doesnt mean you should.

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Agreed. After seeing cars rooted and controlled remotely I'd rather have a car with no software at all. It's time for a new Luddism.

Among the many reasons why I drive stick, this ranks near the top.

The clutch serves as a wonderful dead man's switch.

I'd be willing to bet a significant percentage of HN's readers drive stick.

For the GP's reasons? I'd be curious what percentage here do drive stick.

I never learned to drive manual. I'm ready to play on my iPhone while my Auto drives me to/from work daily.

> I'd be willing to bet a significant percentage of HN's readers drive stick.

Is that because they have any technical comprehension of it or because they want everyone else to swoon?

Except for those of us who drive hybrid eCVTs or electric. Owning an automatic was one of the most expensive decisions of my life... One I wouldn't repeat if I could avoid it.

Just curious as to why owning an automatic was one of the most expensive decisions of your life?

Just for reference I own an automatic and I'm quite happy with it.

Pure electrics don't have gearboxes...

Your brakes are many times more powerful than your engine too.

I agree, however depending on your make/model your brakes can be disabled electronically as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire

Well, cars whose computers are not linked to a network.

You'll have to get carburetors back to do so, though.

I just bought myself a motor cycle a week or two back which runs just fine with a completely dead battery (I need to roll start it, but its a 125cc two stroke so that's _super_ easy...). The indicators don't blink with the dead battery (they just sort of light up), and the headlights are very dim, but it ran just fine for ~450km like that last Sunday...

> This looks like the latest in "internet of things" idiocy. Things that were once simple, but which now inexplicably run Linux.

I'm not sure that a different OS would necessarily prevent stupid errors like this one - the exploit would just be less obvious.

I think they're saying that it's silly to use any complete operating system for a task that could be entirely handled by a few kilobytes of embedded code running on an 8088.

Are there best practices for designing connected, secure-by-default embedded devices? If you want to give your fridge an IP address, I feel like there should be an easy way to do that without additional security worries.

There is no easy way. There are ways to prove software correctness, but it is far from easy

I guess I'm thinking that, for a simple hardware system with a handful of inputs and a handful of outputs, there's no need for it to be able to support a full command line, various ports and protocols, etc, etc. There should be a setup where it is completely closed off by default, and the developer enables a few specific I/O channels that only interact with the logic the dev programmed in.

I may be oversimplifying things. Or maybe I've just reinvented old-fashioned embedded circuits, which still work fine but are out of fashion because devs want to work with their familiar tools.

And because you can only prove software to be correct given some specific conditions, your provably correct system will eventually get pwned through a side channel anyway.

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