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Comment by bigmofo | Hacker News Reader

I would have thought that EFF and FSF would be more active in trying to promote open source in automobiles for privacy, security and being able to repair and modify the vehicle. I would think that it would be rather mind blowing how much information is gathered by the new vehicles about oneself. I have enough money to buy any model of Tesla, but will not due to privacy, security and safety reasons. (I consider drive by wire braking and acceleration a safety issue. With a stick shift I can insert the clutch and know that the drive system can be disabled. I also consider that the software can be modified over the air forcibly by Tesla a safety issue because it could be used for nefarious purposes.)

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Sooner or later, some city is going to be held for ransom by a group that has disabled (or hijacked) all of the Teslas in it. "Give us a king's ransom or your roads will be clogged with immovable cars, and thus unusable, for weeks". Right now, there are not enough software-hijackable cars on the road for this to work, but that is changing. Once you have a critical mass of perhaps even just 5% of the cars, you can bring all traffic to a halt until your demands are met.

Curious, why do that, and not say attack the power grid?

Well, that may happen too, but you don't want to impair the victim city's ability to pay the ransom. But, I'm afraid, we'll just have to see which happens first.

I do agree with the sentiment, but in this particular example if I were the local government I’d endure the pain for the 24-36 hours it’d take to get the inflicted vehicles gathered up and then simply ban them from driving until the manufacturer fixes the issue.

If I didn’t have the legal authority to do it I’d probably still do it and rather pay the damages than the ransom.

Something close happened with a used-car dealership where every car got a remote immobilizer added in order to make repossession easier. One ex-employee logged into the system and locked up every car, including cars that were paid off or had been sold to unsuspecting customers.

https://www.theregister.com/2010/03/18/repo_man_hack/

> I have enough money to buy any model of Tesla, but will not due to privacy,

Which modern car do you think is not violating your privacy?

That would make for a good topic. Also, it is difficult to maintain older cars going when parts become harder to get. So, even if one does not want to buy a new car; at some point one might be forced to getting a newer car. I very much appreciate these hackers and hope that there will be a thriving and vibrant hacking community for new vehicles. I am personally not interesting in unlocking unpaid for features; but for privacy, security and safety reasons.

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