Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

Internet-connected cars are a national security issue when manufacturers are from one country (A) and consumer is in another country (B). For example, the President of country A might wake up in a bad mood and order to disable all A-manufactured cars in B until they reconsider the trade deal. Or, he might order to collect geolocation, plugged for charging smartphone data, audio and video recordings from cars in B belonging to military personnel.

Smart cars can record street views, location of WiFi access points and GSM towers, and this data is useful for guiding missiles and drones when GPS is being jammed.

And how can we deal with this? Inspections on import? Country-level DPI to block data exfiltration? But DPI is not perfect because there are obfuscation and VPNs. And today we have Starlinks as well, which are difficult to block. Except from banning foreign smart cars altogether, there seems to be no simple solution. Or maybe oblige the manufacturer to use local computer boards and software when importing cars?

This has already happened. Mostly to Russia

> In late 2025, hundreds of Porsche vehicles in Russia became "bricked" (immobilized) because the cars’ satellite-based security systems (VTS) required continuous connectivity to European servers. Following the suspension of Porsche's operations in Russia, the cars could not "phone home" and automatically activated anti-theft immobilizers, preventing engines from starting.

> Tesla has remotely disabled Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities on vehicles in multiple countries—including Europe, South Korea, China, and Turkey—after detecting unauthorized "jailbreak" devices used to enable FSD in regions where it was not authorized.

> Reports from July 2024 indicate that Chinese brands have planned to or have blocked multimedia systems and other features in cars that were imported into Russia through non-authorized channels rather than through official dealers.

> American manufacturer John Deere remotely disabled advanced agricultural equipment looted by Russian forces from Ukraine, rendering the high-tech machinery useless after it was moved to Chechnya.

Do it like china does with iphones. Apple sells them but icloud in china is controlled fully by a chinese company owned and operated by chinese citizens.

While this does not fully prevent backdoors and hacking it does raise the bar quite a lot.

Or, here's a crazy idea: Maybe cars don't need to connect to the internet at all.

99.5% want to. Not something that will change.

The president of a country disable another country's cars to push a trade deal because he was in a bad mood?

What an utterly ludicrous and silly notion.

Is what I would've said two years ago.

I wish it was two years ago.

Less internet connection in cars?

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