Hackers detail vulnerabilities at agtech giants John Deere, Case New Holland

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36 points·trynewideas··5 comments

> "You could permanently denial of service to that farm just by simply over spraying one season, by literally loading up the fertile ground with too many chemicals."

Conceivably you could load up the soil with chemicals to an extent that it takes many years for sufficient breakdown to occur. But if you've filled up your tank to spray 100 acres and it runs dry after covering one acre, you're not exactly going to fill up 99 more times.

It's something we're going to see time and time again with companies that dominate a non-IT based industry trying to pivot and incorporate IT into their company.

I'm not sure how we're going to address these issues. I don't think fines will work. I'm not sure if having laws to maintain security standards will work.

It's a multi-faceted issue and I'd love to see what people in any industry can suggest.

Closed firmware and booloaders locked to any keys other than the customer's should be illegal.

It's very simple.

There was a good write up to this a few months ago with a step by step breakdown of how they went about it - https://sick.codes/leaky-john-deere-apis-serious-food-supply... - well worth a read.

Yep, see also https://sick.codes/being-root-on-two-agriculture-companies-i... which covers the DEF CON presentation as well as some that didn't make the presentation.

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