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Testing Out Cell-Phone Viruses on a Prius

Posted by timothy on from the deep-underground-in-their-lair dept.

Mikko Hypponen writes "Couple of months ago there were rumours floating around that Bluetooth viruses could infect the on-board computers of some Lexus cars, or at least cause some visible effects on them. We took a Toyota Prius to an underground bunker and tested various Bluetooth mobile phone viruses and assorted Bluetooth attacks against the onboard computer. Results were somewhat surprising. It came as no surprise that we could not infect the car, but the Prius performed in the test even better than expected. No matter what we did the car did not react to the Bluetooth traffic at all. Cabir tried to send itself to the car and the car just did not allow the Bluetooth OBEX transfer to happen. Then, the whole car crashed (but not because of a virus)... Full story with pictures in our weblog."

3 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. what a shitty error message by RevDobbs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Granted, the transmission may not be working -- but there should be a diagnostic saying "OMFG Battery Voltage Low" first. If you lost your arms in an industrial accident you don't start by telling the doctor that you have a hard time holding pens...

  2. Re:Still At Risk by RevDobbs · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's a very interesting idea to DOS a car.

    A much easier to execute Denial-of-Service would be to slash the tires, doncha think? Only takes about 45 seconds to get to all four of 'em, it isn't terribly noisy, and I've never been caught doing it.

    I mean, it seems like that detection would be very unlikely.

  3. Virus that pummels users into submission by G4from128k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TFA, further down the page, describes the user experience of a Cabir infection. The recipient must click "yes" a number of times to accept the unknown transmission, install the unknown file, and bypass a security warning about installing something from an unverified supplier. Why do people click "yes" to all this? Because if you click "No" the virus keeps trying to install itself and pester you with the messages.

    Definitely reminds me of "Abort/Retry/Fail" error message of so long ago. The first time you ever see the message, you hit "retry" a few times hoping it will work. Eventually, the computer teaches you to never try "retry" because it only puts up the error message again.

    This virus is social engineering at its best, just like the whiny kid in the grocery store. Keep pestering until they say "yes."

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.