Hacker News Reader

In case you’re thinking you’ve seen this sort of research before, the difference is that they don’t touch the sign, just illuminate it.

I’m not sure how much a difference that makes in practice?

View on HN

It makes a massive difference. To the human eye, the altered sign is not really distinguishable from the normal one and the attackers don't need to approach the sign in order to alter it. It makes a remote attack scenario quite achievable (depending on signal strength required for the laser etc). Think people camped out in a hotel room over looking a freeway and causing Telsas all to crash.

Modifying street signs isn’t actually hard, though, and whoever did it could leave right away. I’m not sure how noticeable to humans the modifications need to be? A minor disadvantage is that it leaves evidence.

The hotel room thing seems like a lot more work than quickly done vandalism, and I’m wondering how close to the sign they would need to be.

To use a very clunky metaphor I suppose it's like the difference between gun crime and knife crime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com