Allan

Car-hacking

Remember the car chase in “Tomorrow Never Dies” where James Bond remote controls his car from the back seat, using his mobile phone? (->YouTube). It is a good example of 007 movies showcasing technology that may become mainstream in a not too distant future (without the car-to-car missile system, I presume). Not that remote controlling cars are anything new: The Russian Lunokhod drove on the Moon in 1970, remote control cars were sold in toy stores in my childhood and who knows how long the Opportunity rover on Mars will keep going(?). What is new, though, is that soon somebody may (unauthorized) remote control your car from their mobile: OwnStar Wi-Fi attack…. Not good.

Connecting cars to the internet is a good idea. For example:

There will always be up-to-date weather and traffic information available
The car can schedule service and order spare parts on its own
IFTTT can turn on car heating 15 minutes before you leave for work if the temperature is freezing

and then there is all the communication and entertainment options, which can of course be handled with a mobile phone already, but integrating the functions would be convenient. All these good ideas comes with their potential issues due to buggy software, failing connections etc, and then comes all the opportunities for abuse via insecure connections, back doors and admin accounts, like the mechanic triggering car service requests when business is slow and people held hostage inside hot cars with closed windows and air condition off (there will be some action movie where the villain takes remote control of all cars in the city and the day is saved by the only guy who knows how to operate a stick shift).

I am sure none of these cave ats will prevent cars from joining the Internet of Things, but I hope that the risks will be addressed in time, especially those related to security. It is not impossible: there are strict regulations in place for development of software for medical devices, and including security in the equivalent regulations for cars would do a lot to improve the situation, as would some simple design rules, such separating the navigation, communication and entertainment systems from the core control functions of the car in such a way that getting access to one system does not enable access to other systems (cf. the case of Chris Roberts allegedly taking control of a plane after hacking the inflight entertainment system ->link).

Addressing the risks requires a proper understanding of the issues and solutions all around, including the automotive industry, the legislators, the press and the organisations representing the consumers. It hope this post will move things a bit in the right direction.

Related Posts

Security Info Links^3

Windows 10 Installed and so what? (in a good way)

July 29 has come and passed , with Windows 10 being released as expected. There are some nice additions and some oddities. And now I am back to doing whatever I was doing before installing it, which is just the way it should be.

While I have had the the preview versions running on virtual machines and old laptops since last October, I have waited for the final release to update my primary PC. Not only because I don’t want to take chances on the workhorse that also handles all l my private stuff (I don’t want to repeat the surprises I got with OneDrive after upgrading to windows 8.1 and I don’t mind that this online/off-line file thing is not in Windows 10 (yet)), but also because I use the opportunity to upgrade the system with new discs etc. (and doing the upgrade without touching the existing system definitely gives peace of mind).

I prefer to do clean installs – and have done so ever since (inevitable?) mixed success when I installed Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp on top of Windows 3.1 – so I followed this guide from Ars Technica: How to do a clean install of Windows 10 (from Windows 7 and 8), starting out with a fresh Windows 7 installation. It was quite straightforward.

It still amazes me how easy it has become to install a new OS, be that Windows or Linux. Long gone are the days of gathering a stack of driver CDs (or floppies : ) for each piece of hardware in the box, and gone are the anxiety that a wrong move might require you to start installation all over. Having done the Windows 7 installation just before installing Windows 10 demonstrated recent improvements: For the first one I needed to install the LAN card driver, for Win 10 I didn’t. The only disc I needed this time was the driver for software and driver for my scanner – everything else was available online, including drivers for an old TV card I just bought second hand.

It is good to see the new operating system running on proper hardware and so far all is good. There were no surprises (which is not surprising, since the final version was the as the latest Insider preview). I don’t doubt sure there are bugs to be fixed new UI inconsistencies and useless touch UI apps, but after installing my usual suite of application I probably won’t notice any that. Outlook for mail, Google Chrome browser, Evernote, Steam… It all runs and I am back to doing things the usual way, with the OS being unnoticeable once the login screen is passed.

In that way, moving to the new OS is both totally irrelevant and all important. Irrelevant because once my favorite software is installed I will hardly notice it, all important because a well working and fully updated OS is what allows me to concentrate fully on work and play, without having to worry about what happens under the hood.

Berry Week!

This week and last has turned out are the berry weeks, where all the berry bushes in the garden ripen at pretty much the same time. Which also happened to be the week after a long vacation and just when my wife returned to work after a very long break. The best time to go pick a bunch of berries, clean them and cook jam – because it was the only time. In a way probably fortunate, because it is also the kind of thing that, if we could choose exactly when to do it, we wouldn’t get it done.

Thursday Jul 16 was the date for gooseberry, although we had to stop picking because of mosquitoes and to get the jam done before it got ridiculously late. We picked the rest on Sunday and got a total yield of 3½ kg of gooseberry from a single plant (an 8 year old Ribes ‘Invicta’).

To cook the jam we cleaned the berries and followed the instructions on the side of the jam sugar bag: Mix 1 kg berries with 1 kg jam sugar in a pot (using less will make the jam less sweet – vary according to taste), then add a bit of water and the seeds from one vanilla bean (we added the bean too). Boil for 10 minutes, remove the foam on top and then pour into hot, sterilized glasses. Tighten the lids on the glasses and briefly place them upside down so that the hot jam sterilizes the top of the glass and the inside of the lids. That’s it.

We also got raspberry enough for a couple of glasses using the same recipe (except the vanilla bean).

(I note that what started out as yet another technology blog may be turning into yet another cooking blog – now, that’s a challenge to myself : )

Planting the Seeds of 2015

Time has passed since I wrote about sowing the seeds for this year’s greenhouse.

The tomatoes were repotted on Apr 12, the chilies repotted on Apr 21.

The chilies haven’t sprouted well. Out of 60 seeds came only about 20 plants worth repotting – some of them being an actual disappointment (partly my own fault though – I don’t think I compressed the soil in the trays properly when sowing, so either the cells dried out, or I buried the seeds to deep.

Tomatoes were excellent, though. Most sprouted and

Bloody Butcher: 11 seeds, kept 5 of 6
Black Cherry: 10 seeds, kept 4 of 8
Tangidel: 10 seeds, kept 4 of 8
Rosadel: 10 seeds, kept 3 of 7
Sungold: 5 seeds, kept 3 of 5
Tumbler: 5 seeds, kept 3 of 5
First in the FIelds: 5 seeds, kept 3 of 5
Gardener’s Delight: kept 3 of 5

That is 28 plants and I only need 14, so plenty to give away to friends, family and colleagues.

Now the windowsill is full of plants. Only for few more days though – then I will move the tomatoes to their final spots in the greenhouse.

Bricks, Mortar and the Net

My wife and I just visited a local knitting store to buy yarn for a sweater/cap set for a little niece and scout yarn for an upcoming sweater-for-me project. It didn’t go the way we hoped.

Now, local stores of any kind have been challenged for a long time. Most recently by internet trade, but before that they were threatened by malls and super markets, before that plain competitors and stores selling newer and better products. Still, in recent times internet trade has probably given the coup de grace to many small shops that were already struggling.

It doesn’t have to be like that of course. Good service and the opportunity to see and feel a product can still make the local store relevant. For example, I have never seriously though about buying aquarium fish and plants online – not when I can go somewhere and see that the animals are healthy and look good; and where I can get a qualified discussion about the answers. We want to support that and don’t mind paying (a bit) extra to support them.

However, this time we didn’t get the chance. When we asked the first question about the pattern, we were advised to go check it on the publisher’s web site. When we asked for some specific yarn for the niece project we were told that it was not in store at the moment. (Period. No alternate yarn was suggested and there was no saying when new would be ordered.)

Surprised, we left the store with money in the hand and went to publisher’s web site which helpfully provided “buy yarn here ->” links.

The ordered yarn arrived the next day.