It Should Not Be Illegal to Hack Your Own Car’s Computer

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/let-us-hack-our-cars/

by sinak • 12 years ago

54 60 12 years ago

HarryHirsch4• 12 years ago

In normal countries freedom of research is written into the constitution. What do use rights and reproduction rights have to do with examining works of engineering, even if they come with copy protection?

pavel_lishin2• 12 years ago

In normal countries freedom of research is written into the constitution.

Can you name some examples?

HarryHirsch4• 12 years ago

Germany, article 5: Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei.

murbard2• 12 years ago

Even if it's made legal, they can always sell you a 100 year lease on the car with terms and conditions.

If it's that bad, let market pressure will push the model out of existence.

pavel_lishin2• 12 years ago

If it's that bad, let market pressure will push the model out of existence.

Not enough people in the market care about this for it to truly impact car manufacturers.

Even if it's made legal, they can always sell you a 100 year lease on the car with terms and conditions.

This, however, seems like something that the market would react poorly to, unless it was made significantly cheaper than owning.

a3n2• 12 years ago

In Hawaii (at least in the past, I think currently too), when you buy a house, you often don't buy the land, you lease it from someone on a typically 100 year basis. I believe this form of ownership, leasehold, exists elsewhere too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate

pradn• 12 years ago

I'll support you hacking into your car's computer as long as it doesn't endanger me when you drive it on the road.

sp332• 12 years ago

Endangering people on the road is already a crime.

toomuchtodo3• 12 years ago

Aircraft avionics and software are subject to rigorous testing and qualifications. Why should automotive control systems be different?

You may hack your Mustang, your Tesla, whatever if it never leaves your driveway or the dragstrip, but those checksums from production better match for any CAN network connected subsystem if you want to roll out onto a public, controlled road. You should be free to modify anything that is airgapped from velocity or direction management though.

agmcleod• 12 years ago

Right, but then people doing so would only be able to be arrested after someone gets hurt. It's not really preventable crime. I just see this as being open to negligence and misuse.

a3n2• 12 years ago

Can I also adjust my network profile on my computer, so long as I don't endanger you on the internet?

krisdol• 12 years ago

How is a car's computer in this way any different than any other modification to the car? What's your point here? If I remove the brakes from my car or install them incorrectly, I may not be able to brake before hitting you. Does that mean it should be illegal to repair your own car? I really don't understand what your point is.

stolio5• 12 years ago

It's hard to introduce a bug into mechanical systems like brakes. Most home mechanics can tell immediately if they did something wrong.

It's hard not to introduce bugs into programs. How many "tinkerers" can debug and safety-check a complex embedded computing system that manages complex electrical and mechanical systems in real time?

mariocesar2• 12 years ago

I wish that the media stops saying Hack, That is counterproductive.

You should be free to customize, fix, improve your own car's computer for your personal purposes.

ToastyMallows• 12 years ago

But then why will people click on the article? Gotta use those sensationalist buzzwords!

mariocesar2• 12 years ago

Well the worse effect is the current comments in this thread, they are discussing liabilities, possible endangering others!

Not about the simple idea that I have to be free to buy a car and make it an airplane.

Crito2• 12 years ago

I think "tinker" is a good alternative word. When you make the case about fixing your own car, you'll often get obtuse responses like "Why would I want to fix my car? I'll leave it for the professionals." People understand "tinkering" though. This takes advantage of an inherent respect most people in our society have for the hobbies of others, even if they are not hobbies they can relate to.

Buge• 12 years ago

I think it fits Richard Stallman's definition of hack:

"Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness."

https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html

dogecoinbase• 12 years ago

Presumably the agreements people enter into regarding functional modifications to cars when they purchase insurance already prohibit this, and I imagine insurance companies would be all too happy to deny payment based on car-computer-modification.

kw712• 12 years ago

This article is one-sided and shortsighted. There are many reasons why engine controls must include anti-tampering measures. There is a business case to extend these principles to other control modules in a car. Disclosure: I've been an automotive DMCA violator for nearly a decade.

An obvious reason is that the manufacturers do not want to deal with warranty issues. Of course you can probably understand that the possibility is there that bad software can result in engine damage. This applies to other systems, too, for instance the guy who demonstrated that he could alternately flash his headlamps like a police car by sending traffic to the lamp controller probably does not realize that he should not be reigniting the HID lamp every couple of seconds, because this will shorten its life.

The automakers are liable to laws in every developed country. The United States has these average fuel economy laws that the carmakers must meet, and in some states, harsh emissions regulations must be adhered to and guaranteed. The emissions testing regime in some of these states has done away with exhaust gas analysis and relies on the engine control's self-diagnosis to show that the vehicle is performing to spec.

However in other countries, increasing pollution emitted by a car constitutes tax fraud.

Road safety is also important. One German carmaker uses the same diesel engine for a range of vehicles which have differing performance levels. I thought it was clever when I found that you could change the low market six cylinder from a cheap model to give the power output of the top model of the range simply by carefully changing eeprom data. But the low market model has a lame exhaust and small brakes. Triple the engine output power and this is potentially a disaster.

For as long as the universe of tinkerers will include those without experience or scruples, the carmakers will have to keep developing anti-tampering measures to show that they are attempting to guarantee that their products will perform within the bounds of the law, and indemnify them against bogus liability and warranty claims. Some tinkerers are smart enough to see the big picture and think about the results of what they are doing. Others either don't realize that these systems were designed by teams of engineers with more degrees and experience than them, or figure that they can sell genitalia enhancements to any twentysomething that walks in the door. These are the guys that scare me.

HarryHirsch4• 12 years ago

Road safety is an admirable goal, but that's an issue that you tackle with liability law, car registration and inspection regulations, road users code &c. The DMCA is such a badly written piece of law that lends itself to overreach, and it doesn't need to be extended to yet another area.

Besides, people have been tuning their cars for 100 years now, you'd think that by now the police had some experience keeping the worst specimens of the public roadways.

vonmoltke3• 12 years ago

A solution to the road safety and emissions issues is to come up with a public standard for ECU software. Make adherence to that standard a requirement to pass the annual tests in states that have them. States that don't (I'm looking at you, Florida) have already stated indirectly that they don't really give a shit about these issues.

niels_olson• 12 years ago

What about tuning an autonomous car? What if the autonomous car kills somebody? What if it wasn't your algorithm? You bought it off some guy? Is that a false sale? Who pays for the hospital bill?

kw712• 12 years ago

We have computer-controlled braking and throttles now, and while I figure it's unlikely that someone will tinker with the brakes software (as long as it's not integrated into something he wants to tinker with) there has been a famous case where a factory throttle control has been alleged to be bad.

The emissions (and taxes in the countries where taxes are a function of emissions) aspects are more likely to be the justification of any repercussions against these activities.

Animats• 12 years ago

For racing, yes, but not for street-legal cars.

vonmoltke3• 12 years ago

In the lower-end circuits nearly all of the cars are modified street cars. They are no longer street-legal, unless competing in a race that requires them to be, but they all started that way.

tessierashpool2• 12 years ago

This is a property rights issue. If you sell somebody something, they own it.

Extending the old-school boxed software "licensing" model to everything on earth which contains a computer undermines the basic concept of property rights. The result is a bizarre neo-feudalism where corporations own everything and people just lease it.

It's your car, you own it, the end.

ChikkaChiChi4• 12 years ago

This week I've now read about Car DRM, Coffeemaker DRM, and CAT LITTER DRM. It seems the ship has sailed on what the public will tolerate.

I want to go home now. This is depressing.

dalke• 12 years ago

Owning doesn't mean having absolute control.

For example, if you own land on the California coast, you may be prohibited from shutting down public access to the coastline. If you own a house, you may be prohibited from kicking out renters.

"Neo-feudalism" has an interesting observation. In Sweden, Norway, and Finland there is still a "freedom to roam." A land owner can't simply prohibit people from entering to go hiking, pick berries or mushrooms, camp overnight, etc. These countries also didn't have feudalism. One conjecture is that there's a meaningful connection between the two. The idea of "you own it, the end" may itself be neo-feudalism.

belorn2• 12 years ago

It used to be that people who bought property became owners. This ownership of private property provided exclusive power over a object, rights to offspring or products produced by it, and governing the use of the object.

DRM eliminates this concept from anything with a computer in it, which in 2015 is most properties of significant worth. The right to govern is retained by he who has the key, which the seller keeps in order to create additional opportunity for revenue. To justify this, the seller argues that this helps reducing the initial cost of the product.

If the property then happens to produces anything of value, say data logs which can be sold, the producer also retains the right to that data by a shrink-wrap license. This is of course insane, as any such schemed used with physical property would be fast put down as fraud. You can't sell a cow, put a 40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate, and claim thus the milk or offspring are yours. The legal system would not stand for it, especially if it was done large scale with millions of customers.

mark_edward• 12 years ago

Of course you can do things like that. Don't sell the cow, sell people a license to keep, pet, and feed the cow, etc. The license stipulates that the cow's milk and calves remain the property of the lessor.

How do you think software licenses work? You don't own any propiertary software, you own the license to use it under certain circumstances. You're renting it really, just with (usually) a one time payment.

6stringmerc2• 12 years ago

...but if you purchase a car, and the car will not run without the software, did you purchase a license for the car? There is a distinction here that may be worth considering which goes counter to practical application. If a car is "owned" but the software is "leased" then there's a new kind of transactional contract that needs to be set forth in plain language...or lawyered until the cows come home...

stolio5• 12 years ago

Yes, yes, we all hate DRM. Cars are more complicated: you don't own the air that goes in one end and and comes out the other, you don't own the roads, and you don't own the property and lives you may destroy if you give a variable a stupid name or allocate some memory wrong.

My friends and I grew up doing all kinds of stupid things to our cars to make them go faster, one guy had a 5 psi turbo system pushing over 20 psi of boost because he broke the pressure sensing system. We did stupid, stupid things to our cars and generally ended up taking to them junkyard. It is a Very Good Thing it was prohibitively difficult for us to jumper in to the computer and start messing with stuff, because we would have. The more road blocks to people like us messing with their ECU's the better.

ChikkaChiChi4• 12 years ago

We (The US) already have laws that hold you accountable for being criminally negligent if you do a thing and cause harm to person or property. Do you really need additional protections from keeping yourself out of trouble? Is the only reason you don't do a thing is because you might be breaking the law?

MrDom3• 12 years ago

It used to be that people who bought property became owners.

Depending on who you ask, that stopped being the case the minute states started charging property tax. It's not yours, you just rent from the government. With the addition of zoning laws, it's hard to argue with that interpretation.

You can't sell a cow, put a 40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate, and claim thus the milk or offspring are yours.

If Monsanto could prove the cow was GMO and their intellectual property, they could do almost exactly that. At the very least, they could put an injunction on the sale of cows and milk until they could verify if a patent had been broken. During which time, the farm would most likely go under.

belorn2• 12 years ago

There is a difference between the state overriding property law and private entities doing it. The state has monopoly on breaking laws, and in a democracy, is supposed to only do so when it serves the public they represent. It is this difference that allow the police to lock people up, or fine individuals. As you say, they use taxes, copyright, and patent law, all which override private property laws.

DRM however allows private entities to override property laws completely, while tricking the consumer. While Monsanto can with the help of the government prevent the sale of produce, they do not come in the night and steal it and sell it as their own property. They don't turn food into stone with the flick of a switch. I dislike Monsanto and I think they do trick people into a deal which is not obvious, but they are not even in the same league as DRM with 40 pages long licenses that updates dynamically which not a single person can understand.

thatcherclay• 12 years ago

It should not be illegal to alter the car's computer, but to drive that car on a road where you are endangering other people, we have certifications and laws for that. IMHO, that is reasonable. I don't want your buggy software to deactivate your power steering and have you slam into me.

arsalanb• 12 years ago

I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and one of my recent projects had a lot to do with onboard computers on modern vehicles. This article is viewing only one side of the scene, and doing this with great bias.

While some of the examples like the Dinan S1 M5 is legit, these companies are less of a concern that the average script kiddy who wants to "hack" his car because it's the new thing to do in town. Advanced features like traction control and even cruise control on vehicles are critical to implement perfectly, and a small mistake in the code that guides these can be fatal. Companies like BMW spend millions on testing the code and making it perfect for use, and what this article is arguing for is replacing that with something that anybody can write. This is not safe.

On the other hand, some things like the Nismo and it's software imposed speed limit are just state restrictions. The Nissan GTR has a set speed limit which is turned off when the GPS detects that you're on a racing circuit.

Companies are ethically obliged to make sure that no amateur or third-party can make their cars unsafe. They are right in doing so, because at the end of the day they are liable. If there is a fatal accident of a BMW M5 due to a software failure error, nobody (read, the media) is going to blame Dinan. BMW takes the brunt for it. They are blames for writing "shitty software".

Unless companies or individuals are legally obliged to be accountable for the changes they make to a car, companies are right in making the cars impossible to tweak. It's not about the fact that you "own" the car and hence should be allowed to do whatever you like. That works only for iPhones and Play Stations where your actions probably wont result in somebody dying.

tl;dr — Much like spare parts, faulty software can kill onboard passengers in vehicles. While hacking sounds "cool", slight irresponsibility can end badly.

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Ha! Traction control in my Subaru Forester is a joke. On snow and ice it turns my car into one of those football players in that vibrating football game. The only way to drive in Iowa is to turn the feature off, every time I get in the car.

6stringmerc2• 12 years ago

You bring up quite a few excellent points, re: OEM engineering versus shade-tree tinkering. There is definitely merit to considering the "brain" of a car to be integral to its safety. Should a person wish to modify their car from OEM specifications, there are numerous avenues by which this can be done in a negative manner. As a reference point, I've been a "car guy" and fan of tuning / customization / tinkering for over a decade, and even had a chipped turbo car at one point in my life.

Regarding a real-world hazard specifically, I'll cite the example I frequently see on the road of a Chevy/GMC/Caddy SUV with much larger than stock wheels and tires and bone stock brakes. This is an obvious violation of the OEM engineering, a genuine physics problem. The safety of the driver/passengers is in jeopardy, as is the safety of others who share the road.

Thus, I'd like to note that I believe there's a bit of self-serving "caution" in place when it comes to manufacturers. I'll be stating a far-fetched sounding hypothesis, but one I believe is relevant. Okay, so if a manufacturer sells a car, but with extensive restrictions on modification, why does the manufacturer simply get to "write-out" safety obligations for the lifespan of the vehicle? Sometimes there are "service plans" that will address some basics (oil, tire inflation), but only for a limited timeframe. Should OEM safeguards to computer systems only apply for that period of time?

Or, to put it another way, if manufacturers cared about safety, why wouldn't they be held responsible for performing State Safety Inspections and provide the materials to ensure a vehicle meets the safety regulations year after year after year?

I know this is an out-there type of postulation, but when talking about vehicle safety, there are many factors that are much more practical in nature (maintenance, driver distraction, age-related degredation of faculties) that get little to no discussion because they're difficult problems. I'm mentioning this notion as a direct response to your theory that "companies are right in making the cars impossible to tweak" because, practically speaking, that's not the case at all...I see this discussion as many trees in the forest of motoring...

ChikkaChiChi4• 12 years ago

Chrysler provides me no way in which to disable the 3G cellular modem in my UConnect system and I'm breaking the law if I try repogramming the buttons on my steering wheel to work with my phone's voice activated controls.

I can't even begin to sort out how upset this makes me feel.

chrismcb• 12 years ago

This isn't about copyright, it is about the DMCA. And just because someone else owns a copyright, doesn't mean you can't own a copy.

It Should Not Be Illegal to Hack Your Own Car’s Computer

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