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Lexus Computers Infected Via Bluetooth
Country_hacker writes "SCNews is reporting certain models of Lexus have been found with corrupted operating systems in their on-board computers. Evidently the virus got transferred through the Bluetooth interface. It's still unclear whether or not the computers run Symbian."
Bill Gates is a known Lexus driver. In 1999 he auctioned one for charity.
So maybe this thing is running Windows? In this case, we already have a solution.
And shouldn't vehicle have a read-only section just for the essentials? So that even the main system is down, the car will detach the OS and still function like a, like a, car?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I own an Alfa Romeo 75, a FIAT 126 and run Windows XP so so I must be a real glutton for punishment :D
BTW, in the UK, FIAT have teamed up with Microsoft to offer XBOX branded cars.
http://www.fiat.co.uk/xbox
Jonathan
and buy tin foil in bulk, it's gonna take a lot to protect my car...
Seriously, can the infected car infect another car that's sitting next to it at a stop light? Or people who are walking by it in the crosswalk?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Calm down folks. I've seen plenty of cool looking computers built in to aircraft instrument panels. Yes, some of them run Windows.
First, you can be assured that they only update via a firmware media card such as SDRAM. Nobody's going to point a Bluetooth antenna at an airplane and knock it out of the sky.
Second, of the gripes that most of you have about Windows, the majority and the most egregious behaviors have to do with what happens when you network these things to insecure places. Windows has actually become quite stable in the last few releases. In a stand-alone configuration these systems are fairly reliable platforms.
Third, most pilots rarely get in to the down and dirty features of their displays. They don't have the time, nor do most of them care enough to learn any more than they need to get the airplane safely from point A to point B. You can say one thing for certain about Windows: the path is well worn. As long as you are doing relatively conventional stuff, it will serve you well.
Fourth, these are just navigation boxes. There are backup instruments. If a navigation computer dies, there will be other resources to navigate with. There are very few things in the panel of the airplane which do not have a backup of some sort --particularly where the avionics stack is concerned.
I say this as one who really doesn't like using or programming with Windows. Like any tool, it has its flaws; though when properly used, it can be quite safe.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
The point about GPS is the same as the point about mobile phones. (And I was talking about phones because the quote you referenced from the article said that's how the system gets infected, not via GPS.) Why NOT build a system that can accept input from anything from a standalone GPS to an iPaq, without requiring some weird proprietary interface? You seem to think it's inherently worse for people to hold their phone while they chew gum and drive at the same time than it is for people to fiddle with a GPS receiver while they drive and chew gum. I kinda doubt you actually own one of these systems or you might have more of a clue about what it's there for.
Breakfast served all day!
Seriously, the FAA isn't that stupid. Go read DO-178B. Critical functions that could cause a catastrophic failure in the event of a malfunction are classified as Level A, and I only know of one off-the-shelf RTOS that's been submitted for approval. Submitted, not approved, last I heard. And an embedded RTOS is orders of magnitude smaller and easier to validate than something like Windows 2000.
Airliners are not being flown by Windows boxes. If there's anything in the cockpit running Windows, it would have to be non-critical, something that could fail and not cause immediate danger to passengers.
Hmm, actually I think there should be a third name for todays gizmos which silly users click because they promise porn, or whatever.
I think originally the term virus was coined because of their way of infecting a binary/media. For executables, the usual way to attach itself to something was to hi-jack the initialization part of the executable and use it to wrap self around the real executable. Pretty much same for media -- Replace bootsector with self, re-locate old bootsector. You really could see the analogy of viral behaviour.
I think I just hate using the term virus for these new things because they are terribly unclever compared to the old way of infection. *shrug*
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