> “Between 1/24-1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software,” the Mazda statement said.
There's an NRSC-5 encoder floating around on Github, if you want to try your hand at it. Notably, it was implemented by an infosec firm, presumably because more garbage code like this is lurking everywhere, and it never gets proper testing because HD Radio is proprietary and its creators never intended an open-source encoder to exist. (To the point of hiding all sorts of details about the codec, but some educated guesses and comparison to similar codecs seem to have paid off.)
So, in this case it just crashes the radios so they boot-loop, but how long until someone figures out a payload that can do more damage?
But, I'm honestly more surprised that it's a Mazda specific issue. I would have expected for the same bug to hit multiple infotainment systems.
I sure would be pissed if I had a car with a backup camera and something like this bricked the big center screen in my car, however.
My hatchback has about the best you could get (and they don't sell it here anymore) and I still added a backup camera, it's very useful.
My little GTI with a backup camera made me an invincible parking machine.
It also enables auto-parking and other enhancements while not inhibiting anyone that wants to perform those functions manually.
A bigger rear window wouldn't have let me see the toddler who'd wandered a short distance off from his parents in a car park and was standing right behind my car.
You can't see the pavement under the bumper, but you can see a kid on a tricycle right behind the car.
Personally I find rear view cameras to be quite disorienting. The view is quite distorted by the wide-angle lens and it's not clear where it can see and where it can't. Do I still have blind spots if I look at only the screen? Where are they? With a mirror I get an intuitive sense of what it can and can't see. Also, I expect the view to move when I move my head like in a mirror, which is part of what makes it so easy to get a sense of where the mirror can see. I suppose someday I'll get used to cameras, but today is not that day.
Your perspective is biased. If the backup camera had been invented before you were born and the automobile after you had been born than you would consider it only logical and familiar to see backup cameras on the wagons and horse drawn carts that you were used to but you would consider automobiles to be 'the expensive gadget-based way of doing things [that] seems horribly shortsighted.'
And to make it more fun, our car has an overlay on the left edge with a top down view of the sensors around the car. That one blocks the view completely in that edge. And has a black background window that slowly fades away.
This doesn’t mean that I am not also checking the surroundings but the backup camera is such a big improvement that I would not buy any car without one.
I've caught myself just backing up without thinking about it in the car with the backup camera. never done that in the old-school mirrors car.
I don't know if there are any studies that back up backup cameras.
That said, I'd much rather have a backup display in my rear-view mirror than a giant touch screen
You are correct that in general the automotive OEM's farm out the various components of the vehicle to suppliers. In that case, they probably also have some sort of support contract in place that ensures the supplier will address issues like this in a timely manner for the duration of the warranty period for the vehicles it is included in.
The moment I switch into reverse the camera forcibly takes over the infotainment screen. You can occasionally see the signal flicker when the switch happens.
But also… a backup camera is hardly critical equipment. It’s there for situational awareness (and a good idea), but doesn’t replace the mirror. And since nobody drives in reverse at high speed, stopping is always an option if it malfunctions.
Brakes are critical, steering is critical. Reverse and everything that entails is not.
The statistic is that every year, in the U.S. alone, over 2000 kids are run over by vehicles reversing. I had to read what you wrote a half-dozen times, but in hindsight the dissonance makes perfect sense.
That’s nothing. 10k a year die from speeding.
I think that take precedence over your idiosyncratic definition of what is critical.
Edit: I really don’t understand why I’m getting downvotes on this. Is it because people are so glad the federal government is in their bathroom making these “critical” decisions for you?
My point is that the federal government makes all kinds of decisions that are obviously not “critical,” and that includes in the auto industry.
The camera is "critical" to manufacturers by definition because it's the subject of regulatory compliance - it's a must have for the manufacturer to clear a gate.
We also know that people have been driving in all sorts of conditions and in all sizes of cars without backup cameras for decades upon decades and cameras are obviously not critical to the act of driving the vehicle. They undeniably help: the field of view is often wider than your mirrors, you can drive backwards at high speed while ducking to avoid bullets, You can see directly behind the bumper of your car to wedge yourself into tighter parking spots and avoid backing over tiny people, etc. I don't believe a functional backup camera is required to resell the vehicle.
If you never learned to drive without a backup camera, it may be more "critical" to you individually.
Emissions systems are a completely different story. Critical to manufacturer and required for resale of the vehicle (technically critical to owner), though who's going to check for that $400 bypass kit? ;)
Manufacturer mandates for general safety have only a small overlap with what is critical.
That's my cue ;)
The Netherlands used to have national championships reverse driving for many years on the official race track at Zandvoort (part of the Formula 1 circuit).
https://www.fleetowner.com/safety/article/21687582/nhtsa-to-...
And decided it was worth it. (If my experience told me anything: Probably under some pressure of marketing or C-level)
Unless we are calling serving unwanted ads as an attack.
But in a broader sense, I am absolutely unsurprised that there is terrible security on automotive hardware and software. Things like this are one of my major personal concerns about self driving cars.
Sometimes though, firmware can't be flashed by dealers (due to not booting), and then they'll swap the unit, and the old unit will be flashed and given to someone else.
Might be worth hiding an airtag taped to the circuit board!
Cars where it can't are inferior.
If that's not a sign that people are making the simplest things Way More Complicated Than Necessary(tm) I don't know what is.
And ID3.
I don't find it distracting. I treat it like everything else on the dashboard and I don't look at it unless I'm at a stoplight or whatever.