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Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

A lot of readers here, and on Reddit seem to be misunderstanding the situation.

The way I understand it, this car was taken in by a garage for 'seat installation'. I presume this means after market seats.

The car disabled itself during installation. The OP assumed due to an anti-temper device, but it could have been any failure mode. Most modern cars with airbags will have sensors in the seats to disable some of the airbags if there is no passenger sitting there. So it is no surprise that any type of work on the seats puts this system in an error state. Especially on high-performance cars it is not unusual that the car immobilises itself when the safety systems are in error state.

A certified dealership will have the computer interface and software to reset the fault mode. For those that do not have this software, Ferrari can remote into the car and reset it for you. This requires connectivity though. This is actually quite a common thing on luxury cars.

This has nothing to do with 'smart' modes, remote hacking capability or disabling a car while in motion. The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking. This is, in fact, a safety system that kicked in.

The solution here was probably simple: bring the car outside, and let Ferrari do it's thing. Or trailer it to a certified dealership to have it reset there.

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> The way I understand it, this car was taken in by a garage for 'seat installation'. I presume this means after market seats.

It was even more basic than that. They were installing a child's carseat for the owner, and I believe it was an anti-theft system that was triggered.

The story reminded me a lot of the rental car that bricked itself because it lost cellular service - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/driver-stranded-after-c...

Who puts a child’s carseat in a Ferrari?

Someone who has both a child, and a Ferrari.

"This baby can go zero to sixty in three seconds flat."

For anyone wondering, assuming linear acceleration that's roughly 1 g. In a rear-facing seat, that's 1 g eyeballs-out, which should still be perfectly safe for the child, but possibly not for the cleanliness of the seat.

...and if you're wondering what 1g eyeballs out feels like, you can always try looking at your feet.

Shouldn't it be actually ~1.4142g at a 45 degree angle?

You're proposing that gravity is stronger in a direction other than the one straight down to the center?

I think they’re referring to the fact that in the Ferrari, you’d experience both 1g eyeballs out plus the 1g of normal gravity, for a total of sqrt(2) at 45 degrees, when compared with looking at your feet producing 1g down.

Also, basically any boring passenger car can brake at or slightly above 1 g.

Maybe if the acceleration is smooth enough, but the sudden appearance of a new g yanking your head to your chest might be dangerous for a baby.

A performance Tesla can also accelerate to 60 under 3s, and with proper warning to hold their heads, my young kids love the rush.

That's a great way to have to change a diaper. Or your pants.

I hate to sound inflammatory, but just to get everyone on the same page, and because I was wondering the same thing:

I thought Ferraris were show-off cars for the rich, and if you were rich enough to have one, and had a child, then you would (sensibly) own a separate, functional car when you actually intended to drive that child around (or employ some car/chauffeur service or whatever).

Edit: I googled Ferraris with back seats, and got this article which opens by acknowledging that people don't expect them to exist or for Ferraris to be kid friendly, so I think I (and the heavily downvoted GP) can be forgiven for harboring this misconception.

>>Adam Merlin, President at Merlin Auto Group, confidently answers, “Every time I speak about Ferraris being kid friendly, people think I’m nuts. And for the most part, I am. After all, even Ferraris that do have back seats often require the rear passenger to sacrifice leg room, so you can imagine peoples’ reactions when I allude to fitting car seats back there. However, after trying a plethora of Ferrari models, I can confidently say there are models you can choose from, if you have a family and still want to spoil yourself by driving a Ferrari.”

https://www.merlinautogroup.com/kid-friendly-ferraris.htm

I agree with you, and honestly I should have been more clear here.

I also think there are different definitions of "kid friendly".

Using a Ferrari to take your 3-month-old toddler to a doctors appointment? That seems like a waste.

Taking your 7 year old kid on a drive in the "fun car"? If I had a Ferrari, and a kid, this would 100% be happening.

But you just need booster seats for 7 y/os, which simply lie on top of the OEM seat without risking this kind of incident, right?

I have 0 experience installing a booster seat in a Ferrari, but frankly I would expect any form of child seat to be installable without risking this kind of incident.

I don't have the knowledge to get into any specifics about this. The point is just that there are plenty of valid use cases for having a child seat in a Ferrari.

On that point, I completely agree.

does it have a back seat?

First, some models do. I don't know about that particular one, because (shockingly) I don't own a Ferrari.

But second, that doesn't matter. Most places do not have laws that prohibit children in the front seat of cars, only that they use appropriate child seats. Further, child seats are typically required for _children_, not just infants. IIRC, for example, in Texas, child seats are required for any child under the age of 8, unless they are taller than 4'9". It is totally reasonable for a 7 year old to want to go for a ride in their parents "fancy" car. It's actually very responsible of this person to get a child seat properly installed in order to support that.

The Ferrari in question is a Portofino, which does have back seats, cramped though they are.

except that child seats are mostly safety theater, of course

Absolutely not the case. A 5 point harness is best. A car seat converts two or three point harness to a 5 point. Which is great, because those soft little bodies need as many touch points as is possible to spread the load of force. We know for a fact that the 5 point harness is the best, that is why race car drivers use 5 point harnesses instead of lap belts.

The three point harness is a good compromise between the uselessness of a lap belt and the incovinience of a 5 point harness. But its certainly not as good as a 5. Point harness.

I think the other reason that street cars don't use five-point harnesses (and why using them is illegal in most states) is that they immobilize your shoulders and neck too well, which makes rollovers more dangerous without a roll cage. You can't lean forward when the roof collapses, so you can be paralyzed.

And it's hard to look towards the rear quarters.

Ah, that's another good point. Turning your head happens a lot more in street driving than racing.

And also they're inconvenient and don't auto adjust.

3-point belts are made to be as quick and fool proof as possible so that people actually use them, and use them correctly. Importantly, they auto-retract so that they are worn in the proper position.

When you put on 5-point belts, you have to 4 times as many latches to operate, and you have to adjust all 5 belts -- and in the proper order. If you tighten the belts in the wrong order, they won't protect you properly. It is not intuitive -- I have a car with 5-points and the passengers who manage to figure out how to latch them almost universally tighten the belts wrong.

Yeah, a 5 point would suck if you had a dress on.

Dumb question: how do race cars and their drivers handle "blind spots"?

Edit to answer my own question: apparently they use spotters that radio in to them whether or not it's clear, and (at least in NASCAR) the cars don't have side mirrors but have an extra long rear view mirror.

They also only drive forwards which helps a lot.

When I was a kid on the farm, all the transmissions in the grain trucks were modified so you could only go forward. Too many accidents driving backwards with bad sight lines. Its a strange thing at first but you get used to always parking with a forward exit.

And less of a modification on an older farm -- backing up horses was hard enough that many older farms will already be designed for one-way traffic, with all eg barns allowing you to pull through.

huh, never thought of that before but that makes complete sense. All the farms I ever worked on were newer mostly created out of irrigation projects from the new deal. All mechanical at that point.

And you're not driving 200 mph.

Lap belts are far from useless; they get you probably 80% of the value of a three point harness. Yes, your torso will flop forward, but particularly for a child's body size there's very little for them to hit.

The heads of very small children are quite heavy relative to the child's size. The concern with a baby is not that they'll hit something, it's that the weight of their head relative to their body will result in spinal injuries.

Consider for instance the $34 million verdict in Texas against Dorel, which failed to warn against placing children under the age of two in forward-facing seats. The kid Cayden was properly restrained in the back seat, but the weight of his head alone was enough to result in spinal injuries that have left him partially paralyzed for life.

We used to laugh at my kid when kid tried to reach for things on the floor and then fell on their head due to the weight of the head relative to the rest of the body -- but that's why rear-facing and five-point is important for children under 2,3 years old.

Oh yeah, a rear-facing infant seat is absolutely a difference-maker - from the talk about "child seats" I thought we were talking about forward-facing seats for children above 3, the benefits of which are pretty marginal AFAIK.

If you've ever tried to buckle a toddler into a standard 3 point belt made for adults, you'll see that the lap belt goes directly across their throat.

Except they're totally not, and saying that is dangerous.

Go look at crash tests of "child car seats" that are nothing more than a box ticking exercise which uses the adult seat, versus a properly engineering seat and you'll see what you are completely wrong.

https://freakonomics.com/2007/01/05/we-are-not-the-only-ones...

That Freakonomics article is from 2007 and was only pointing out that manufacturers don't test all scenarios - not anything resembling your claim that they're just "safety theater". CDC strongly disagrees based on actual accident data (click risk reduction at the following link):

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safet....

Wrong. There's about a 70-80% risk reduction for injury: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15094411/

Is there any evidence for that? I know that for example women are more likely to be injured in car crashes because most car seats/interiors are designed around the average man so if be surprised if a human half didn't need to be raised or put in a safer position.

Don’t men get in more accidents?

Yes, because seatbelts are so effective for us, it turns out there is no selective pressure avoid car crashes.

I didn't know that about seatbelts. All these years of careful driving have been wasted on me.

It only looks that way because we get in more on-purposes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um5gMZcZWm0

https://freakonomics.com/2007/01/05/we-are-not-the-only-ones...

So your "evidence" is a single anecdotal account from over a decade ago?

Actual accident data doesn't back you up...

Some do.

https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/auto/gtc4lusso

But what difference does that make? Why couldn't you put a car seat in the front passenger seat of a two-seater?

Airbags are not designed with the bodies of children or infants in rear-facing carseats in mind. They're actually really dangerous for them - potentially lethal.

And most vehicles have methods to disable airbags when the item/person occupying the seat can not safely handle it.

But if you want to get real sad, IIRC many airbag systems are not designed with an occupant outside the parameters of a typical adult male in mind. Some modern systems are getting better about this, but if you're too short, too tall, a woman, or other-wise-outside-of-the-norm, good luck.

It's worth noting that here in Australia cars have no such method, and you are not allowed to put a car seat in the front seat.

Equally when travelling as best I can tell all European cars have a method to do this and you can install in the front seat.

So this probably varies by country, but I am not sure which countries have what or where the USA is.

Without specifically checking I imagine that the Australian Design Rules basically wouldn't allow them to add the option even if they wanted to - if I had to guess because you're not allowed to have such a disable button (which you could argue could also be dangerous in some cases if pressed or used when it shouldn't be).

What goes wrong with a woman that is the expected size?

Very few women are of the expected size (5' 9" tall) aimed to represent the average male; most women automatically falls into the "too short / other-wise-outside-of-the-norm" as far as car safety testing was concerned until recently - AFAIK cars made since 2012 should be also tested on smaller, female-sized dummies which also created an incentive to alter how they are built.

Well if that's it then making a list of "too short, too tall, a woman" is double-counting.

Also if you take it as exactly 5'9" then airbags aren't suitable for men either. What you need to do is examine the range it's designed for. It's not the average height that matters, it's what percent of men/women fall inside that range. There might be a significant difference in that percent, or there might not be.

There is no such thing as an "average" person: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

That analysis has been done, and there is a significant difference in that amount. You can back-of-the-envelope it yourself if you know that the average height of a woman in the US is 5'4" with a standard deviation of about 3.5".

> Airbags are not designed with the bodies of children or infants in rear-facing carseats in mind.

According to FMVSS 208, they're tested using an unbelted 50th percentile size male dummy. That's the reason they deploy with more force and are triggered at lower impact speed had they been designed with belted occupants of varying sizes in mind.

They are tested without belts to ensure the airbag doesn't kill idiots not wearing their belts. But on all modern cars they're designed to work together with the seatbelts.

If you unplug the cable at the bottom of a BMW seat (so it doesn't know the seat occupancy and belts) it will disable the airbag and show an airbag light.

I suspect they were in the process of disabling the airbag when this all kicked off.

I think it’s illegal in some states, but I could be wrong.

I find it unlikely that, if you don't have a rear seat, you cannot legally carry a child.

It's true in Australia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761210

I do not see any where that's the case.

https://saferide4kids.com/car-seat-laws-by-state/

LMGTFY: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/child-passenger-safety/i....

> Buckle all children aged 12 and under in the back seat.

> - Airbags can kill young children riding in the front seat. Never place a rear-facing car seat in front of an airbag.

Many modern cars have the ability to disable the front passenger airbag, for when you do need/want to put the seat in the front.

And, for some cars, the front seat is safer for everyone, including children, thanks to the focus on improving the safety ratings for front seat passengers (which are often advertised) [1]. For example, my car last car had side curtain airbags only in the front.

On average, especially with older cars, I assume the CDC is probably right. Their recommendations necessarily have to be the most useful for the average/masses.

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/study-shows-back-s...

Not all child seats are rear-facing child seats.

No but for tiny little newborns, all are. Something about not having proper muscle structure around spine to handle thrust forward during frontal (most common) crash. Also reason why you should never shake babies or expose them to any form of higher G.

We're changing the child seat to front facing right now - our baby is 10 months old. It can be done little bit earlier but not too much.

You should actually hold off for longer

> In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new recommendations for car seat safety. As part of these recommendations, they removed their previous age-based recommendation that children remain rear facing in car seats until the age of 2.

> The AAP now suggests that children remain rear facing until they reach their rear-facing car seat’s weight/height limits which, for most children, will leave them rear-facing beyond the previous age recommendation.

Source: https://www.healthline.com/health/childrens-health/forward-f...

My wife and I got into an argument about this when it was time to switch our kids car seat so I pulled up their recommendations and read their sources. Their cited evidence doesn't support their recommendation at all (nor did it when they first made the rec in 2011).

Their 2011 rear facing recommendation is based on a retracted article and their 2016 rec is based on the same article's data except using a smaller dataset which they acknowledge is not statistically significant. The only other data cited looks at rear facing Swedish children compared to _unbelted_ Swedish children.

I went back and reread it to make sure I was remembering right. I'm dumbfounded that this was allowed not only to stand as a rec, but was increased (deepened? made stronger?) when they had even less data than they did before. I get that it feels like it should be safer, but that's not science and I would have expected a group making medical and safety recs to maintain a higher standard.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/5/e201824...

I didn't say they were all rear-facing. lisper asked "Why couldn't you put a car seat in the front passenger seat of a two-seater?" I don't know anything about safety of front-facing or booster seats for kids in front seats. But I think my response was a reasonable answer/example of when you wouldn't want to put a car seat in the front passenger seat.

Ferraris having back seats goes back to the early days of the marque: https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/g6602/ferrari-four-... Not all, of course, but many do.

yes, the Portofino M does have back seats, although they are limited somewhat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_Portofino#/media/File:...

Not only does it have back seats, it has ISOFIX points.

I do. Got an older F430. My son 5 years old loves to sit next to me. And me as well. On the F430 and I believe most other models you can disable the airbag as well. Sometimes safer when the seat is positioned reversed.

Apparently enough people to create a market for seats specifically designed for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9qn...

My first thought: imagine the geometry of trying to get a child into a car seat through a Ferrari door opening …

It's a convertible so it's probably pretty easy.

A baby, that would be weird. But nowadays you have to put a child in a seat until they are like 10...

You aren’t required to always drive fast in a fast/quick car.

Someone trying to show off their money by driving their Ferrari to the grocery store.

>The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking

If your car can connect to the internet it's vulnerable to hacking via the internet. My car, which is incapable of connecting to the internet suffers no such potential for abuse.

Theoretically if the systems are properly decoupled and airgapped than the hacking surface area should be quite low. You might be able to hijack the music coming through the speakers, but you should never be able to control the brakes over the internet.

In real life is that what actually happens? Sadly, no. Car companies seem to make a lot of bone-headed systems engineering design decisions (such as having a computer network path connecting infotainment to critical safety systems)

> Theoretically if the systems are properly decoupled and airgapped than the hacking surface area should be quite low.

Since an over the air update is supposed to improve your 0 to 60 times, pretty much all systems must allow to be updated and thus hardly can be airgapped.

How small the surface is is irrelevant, an internet connected car is more of a risk. I don't want all these features in a car.

Something that is connected to the Internet is, by definition, not airgapped.

It's probably on a VPN or a private APN and not the internet.

Just because the car has external connectivity doesn't mean the car has abusable vulnerabilities. Of course, some vendors are going to be better than others when it comes to hardening, pen-testing, and good operational security.

Even if the only allowable connection is the legitimate manufacturer's, the manufacturer itself could be compromised one day (if not already), allowing malicious commands to be sent on the trusted downlink. Or an "oops I found a bug in the code you just pushed to 100,000 cars" could happen accodentally.

It’s unlikely but possible for an over the airway connection to actually be inherently secure. One example is an isolated system that could monitor say engine temperatures and oil pressure and nothing else.

That sort of system is totally _possible_, but not the way any modern automotive connectivity works.

Modern automotive connectivity is via the CAN bus. It is not a given that the system that's internet connected is even able to talk to the CAN bus.

Most are. GM OnStar systems & Tesla I know for sure are designed in a way that a malicious hack of HQ computers + research into car firmware could lead to a push that would kill potentially millions of people simultaneously. If I really dived into the others, I wouldn't be surprised if ford, VW, toyota and others had similar system design issues.

We are just lucky we live in a world where even 'hackers' don't go that low. I hope future regulation will mandate remote access airgaps. I don't think it's a big price to pay for non-entertainment / GPS software updates to require a physical connection

> We are just lucky we live in a world where even 'hackers' don't go that low.

Unfortunately they do go that low. There have been multiple murders committed by ransomware gangs attacking European and US hospitals in recent months. Example: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/patie...

That's more spray and pray damage then a specific hack on hospitals.

Modern ransomware attacks do recon and exfiltration for weeks or months before pulling the encryption trigger.

The attackers knew it was a hospital network and clearly didn’t care that people would die.

How's it going to unlock the car if it's not talking to the important parts?

Sure someone could make a dedicated secure unlock wire or something, but they don't.

> A certified dealership will have the computer interface and software to reset the fault mode. For those that do not have this software, Ferrari can remote into the car and reset it for you.

Ferrari actually flew a technician in to visit this car, who then said "yep, nothing I can do here." Then they had to push it out and tow it.

> The solution here was probably simple: bring the car outside, and let Ferrari do it's thing.

The solution was not simple.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9qn...

Agreed, I also really dislike this frequent misuse of the term "bricking". Bricking used to mean getting your device into a permanently unrecoverable state, but these days I see it used so often as just to mean "I can't turn it on right now".

Soft brick vs. hard brick is a common (though equally ill-defined) term.

If the user cannot restore it to normal operation using tools that the average user has available, that is definitely a brick though, and I'd argue that it meets even the definition of a "hard brick".

Bricking has never had a solid definition. The most useful definition is a product is bricked when the owner does not have the skills/time/money required to get the product in a working state. The product is a brick to them.

If you flash bad firmware on a device and overwrite the bootloader used for flashing, many would consider this a bricked device since they don't know how to use an SPI flasher to restore a working firmware. For others simply having a device that isnt fixable via a factory reset is bricked because they don't know how to flash via usb.

A car that has become software locked without a way to restore it is bricked imo.

>Bricking has never had a solid definition.

Yeah, the definition is "turn it into a brick"/paperweight, hence the name. A "brick" in unrecoverable, as the name implies.

Unrecoverable is relative. If I wipe out the bootloader on a phone its unrecoverable because I don't know how to flash it directly to the chip and I don't have a copy of the bootloader to even flash. Its a brick because I will never be able to use the device again. If I send it off to the factory in china they could certainly restore the device to working condition again but it would cost more than a new device if they even accept my one off job.

If a DRM system triggers on a car and I can't disable it its now bricked if the dealer won't come and fix it.

So, how is a user to know the difference between “I tried all methods known to me and googled for solutions, but can't turn it on right now”, “the hardware is fine, but nobody can turn it on ever again” and “there’s a hardware problem that means nobody can turn it on again”?

Because if that, I think it’s natural that the concept gets broadened.

Language evolves, it's not set in stone.

Besides, the car might still be bricked, as far as we know? Perhaps the onboard computer is screwed and needs a replacement?

> Language evolves, it's not set in stone.

Yeah, but in this instance I feel like the language is evolving solely because it makes for better clickbait titles. "Bricked" sure sounds scarier than "temporarily unavailable".

Well almost nothing is actually 100% bricked, most phones or motherboards (for bios) can be programmed through some hardware interface. If you brought it to the factory / R&D lab, odds are they would be able to flash most things they designed.

It's just difficult and uneconomical, so isnt offered as a service

You're right of course, but nowadays it's become sort of "some working object has become inert due to software and requires physical intervention"

Exactly. Totally a clickbait headline despite HN comments suggesting evolving language.

This is about as far from bricked as you can get.

> The solution here was probably simple: bring the car outside

They did. Because the car did not have connectivity at the time it detected the issue, it went into full lockdown (judging by the comments, it kept trying for a while, couldn't connect, assumed the worst).

The car performed exactly the way it was programmed to perform. Tampering was detected. No connectivity was found. Lockdown. It will now have to be serviced by Ferrari, a local tech is not enough.

It is difficult to imagine a system that's just as secure but less inconvenient. If you open the door for local 'patches', then you open avenues of attack. Better to do a `rm -rf *` and blow up a firmware chip or two for good measure. Threat vectors are potentially more sophisticated for these cars, if there's a way to locally bypass the lockdown, it will be found.

The target demographic for these cars will not be inconvenienced much. As per the post, the owner went and got his Maserati.

So the takeaway for any Ferrari owners is: make sure there's connectivity if you are trying to perform any changes to the vehicle.

The way I understand it: "smart" everything is getting too clever for its own good.

In your example, why not have a push-button override to allow the car to reset after seat installation?

Soft-everything. I miss my hardware switches.

- signed getting grumpy, getting old man

this is really intended as an anti-theft mechanism, screwing with the car will lock it up and require a call to support to unlock it. So a push-button override would defeat the purpose.

- Undersigned same boat, mid twenties

> The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking.

I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what it means. What happens when someone steals the manufacturer's authentication keys, or gets on to the manufacturer's VPN?

Security and safety systems in a car are 2 different things.

Being able to reset a car that was immobilised due to a failure in the safety system does not mean that you can steal it, nor does it mean that you could create a dangerous situation. Resetting the system does not mean overriding. If the problem persists, the car will automatically immobilise again are the reset.

> let Ferrari do it's thing. Or trailer it to a certified dealership to have it reset there.

This is a very Apple-like line of thinking. It's not a valid excuse.

Luxury car brands are Apple like. Reputation is everything. They don't want someone modifying the car causing it to fail and becoming a big news event. So many stories about explosive batteries and chargers on phones are the result of some dirt cheap china part being used but the news just reports "Product from corporation bursts in to flames"

The "car seat" is a child safety seat, or booster seat. They were strapping an extra apparatus in on existing hard points, nothing that would bother the airbags at all. It was probably some sort of anti-theft mode.

There was an update to the story. They pushed the car outside but that didn't help so they had to tow it.

> The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking.

I don’t see how that follows? The fact that someone can remote into your car is exactly what makes it vulnerable to remote hacking.

>The solution here was probably simple: bring the car outside, and let Ferrari do it's thing

Except the self-same failure mode means you can't bring it outside either except via an expensive process.

More generally, I don't know how any of your points should reassure anyone. Put yourself in this driver's place and tell me how dismissive you'd be at such an event.

Well, if you read all 3 posts - Ferrari flew specialist that couldn't do anything.

It's not exactly straight forward to tow car that doesn't move out of the garage with such low ceiling. They had to manually release handbrake from boot and push it out of the garage.

> So it is no surprise that any type of work on the seats puts this system in an error state.

It's only not surprising if you already know a ton about cars, which is a terrible definition of "surprising" to use here.

"This has nothing to do with 'smart' modes, remote hacking capability or disabling a car while in motion. The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking. This is, in fact, a safety system that kicked in."

Uh, that should be the other way around: "The fact that the manufacturer cannot remote into their cars automatically means that the car is not vulnerable to [that form of] remote hacking."

> The solution here was probably simple: bring the car outside, and let Ferrari do it's thing. Or trailer it to a certified dealership to have it reset there.

This sounds like it invokes the "right to repair" issue though. Is this "Right to repair, but only if the car's online"?

> "Right to repair, but only if the car's online"

You have the right to repair. But you do need the correct tools to do it. If you don't have those tools, Ferrari may help you remotely, but you'll need connectivity for that obviously.

It looks to me like it's not possible to acquire or make the correct tool, and only Ferrari dealers have it, because it's been restricted by Ferrari. But that's not clear from the information given.

In other words, a classic case of: It's not a bug, it's a feature.

> anti-temper device

I want one.

I get what you're saying, but:

> The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking.

I mean, it pretty much does.

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