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TomTom Admits Satnav Device Infected With Virus
miserableles writes "TomTom has admitted to a UK security journalist that a number of GO 910 satellite navigation units shipped with two Trojans installed on the hard drive. But still no sign of an official warning on the TomTom website."
my GPS keeps leading me to a discount Viagra/Rolex Watch warehouse/stock broker!
your computer. So essentially this is a dead virus.
Of course no warnings. Warnings only come out after the lawyers are consulted. One must, after all, get one's priorities straight.
If people would be willing to sue via Computer Hacking laws against Tom Tom? If not have it a tort case, why not make it a criminal case? The fact that they knew about it, and covered it up shows guilt.
These devices are going for ~540$ and with installed viruses to boot. Nice.
Now all those "can't pay attention to the road because I'm watching this little video game" losers will pay for their own lameness.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I guess that is the second major consumer electronics device which has shipped with installed viruses. I imagine if the number of infected devices is really small they probably were infected in the same way as the iPod. Yet another reminder of how shoddy some of the conditions are where all of our nice little gadgets are made.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Tom Tom, should I send $20,000 to Sebo in Nigeria?
The first link, the letter from tomtom, does refer users to a couple free antivirus removal tools that will remove the virus, but other than that, I wonder how much responsibility tomtom will take for getting their customers' PCs infected? If you are a businessman and have taken your tomtom into work and connected to the local network to update your maps for your scheduled sales calls and have now infected the entire company network with viruses, I wonder how much of a problem this will cause and what tomtom would do about it? "Sorry sucker, thanks for purchasing our product, please come again."
I am also a little interested in seeing how tomtom follows this up. There was a report a few months ago about a few ipods shipping with something nasty, and Apple tracked them down all the way to the imaging workstation that started the outbreak. Judging by how tomtom is trying to sweep this one under the rug, I rather doubt they are exercising due diligence. At the very least someone should get fired - either the yutz that violated company policy and brought in his flash drive etc, or the director that didn't have any policies in place to start with. More than likely both are at fault but the guy with the flash drive will wind up taking the fall.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What a coincidence, so do they!
Linux
-Daniel
KD5UZZ
www.w5yj.org
my GPS keeps leading me to a discount Viagra/Rolex Watch warehouse/stock broker!
Really? Mine just leads me to h0t s3xy s!uts. Which is entirely fine with me.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Tom Tom, can i SYN flood across the atlantic trunk? Tom Tom, DDoS Amazon. Tom Tom, spam 4million email addresses.
As someone else noted, it runs Linux. So the virus really is just on the hard drive, so it can execute on computers that attach to the unit, but the virus doesn't actually execute on the GPS unit.
At a forum for tomtom help at http://www.expansys.com/ft.aspx?i=112333&thread=27 96, a user asks,
this is my first post, when trying to download the map of western europe v6.6 direct from TomTom Home site to my PC the following message appears '' an error occurred while dowloading this file: read error., followed by the options ''continue'' or ''cancel.
Can anyone help me with this problem?
His first reply:
Disable your firewall and anti virus and see if that helps.
Silly windows users.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
it's irrelevant to the case in point, as it can act as usb mass storage and thus be carrying infected files.
actually, it's running linux - tomtom's gpl page. Also take not of OpenTom, a team of 3rd party tomtom hackers.
The server that controls the virus will be called "Ground Control".
Just look at the name: Satanv. What could go wrong?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I've been a happy owner of a TomTom 300 for a couple of years. It's a dashboard-mounted Linux-based satnav system. When I went shopping for a device like this several years ago I was impressed by the TomTom's UI & audio quality, both more important to me when using it then lots of rarely used features.
For those who don't understand why anyone would want a satnav system, its been a huge benefit to me. Not only does it guide me point to point, particularly when it's to or from a point I'm not familiar with, it also informs me of services near me. For example the other night I met friends at a cinema I'd never been to before. I was able to quickly navigate to it without having to refer to a printed Google map. After the show we were able to quickly chose nearby restaurant without having to roam around in a convoy. I was then able to simply chose "Home" as the destination from my new location. On the way home I was low on fuel; with the TomTom I was able to skip the first exit promising gas (the TomTom showed it was actually a mile away) and continue to the next exit, with 2 gas stations conveniently by the exits.
TomTom Corp.is out of Belgium, which is reflected in their multilingual features & mapsets. They've been fairly hacker friendly and there are a number of 3rd party addon packages that have shown up over the years. TomTom has a history of hiring those hackers and bringing them in-house.
Their software runs on both Linux & Windows CE. Indeed from what I've seen it is fairly agnostic about either platform and offers the same feature sets on both. They also have a free desktop application for adding & removing maps, updating firmware & software, adding custom voices, etc. This started out on MS Windows and is now also offered on MacOS X.
So far I've been extremely happy with my purchase. The biggest problem has been significant highway construction; my maps are now several years old and don't reflect current routes. However TomTom has recently announced updated maps which I'll be purchasing. My only concern is they issued a press release touting a significant discount for the introduction of these maps, a press release which has since disappeared from their website.
In the years since my model 300 shipped they've now added models with built-in hard drives, Bluetooth for integration with phones, radios, car services like headlights, and via phones downloading traffic updates for dynamic route optimization. This hard drive is apparently what has been affected.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Disclaimer: I work for TomTom. Please note that www.tomtomgo910.co.uk is not the official TomTom website. It seems to be a landing page for easydevices.co.uk since the 'order now' links points to there. The official site can be found here: http://www.tomtom.com/
I'm thinking maybe an alien infected the GPS satellite as revenge for Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith infecting the mother ship. Or maybe it's running on Vista.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
This reply is all too typical of the standard Slashdot drivel that passes for intelligence.
There was not one mention in the linked of any specific OS or its "developer". This Slashdot deweller hase an active - if not idiotic - imagination it seems. He clearly has problems understanding what others write (or don't).
Why don't you all grow up?
Yeah surre. Like I would go visit the official website of an OEM that ships viruses.
Wheeeeeere is my automobile?!
Aren't those two terms supposed to be mutually exclusive?
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Thanks for your thoughts, however I expect my next satnav will also be a TomTom.
Nothing against the other brands, but so far the TomTom's feature set has really matched my needs.
I really really like the speaker on my TomTom 300. Yeah, it's big, indeed its the whole back of the device. The thing looks like a first generation iMac with the big hump behind the screen. But that speaker is clear , I can hear the directions with the windows open, the radio playing, etc.
Not everyone likes voice navigation but I prefer it, especially when I'm dealing with heavy traffic, bad weather, curves, don't know where I am, etc. That's when I hate to divert my attention from what is going on around my vehicle, refocus my eyes on a screen, puzzle it out, try and get names, then return my attention to the road and figure out what has happened in the intervening 100 feet or so. I've got two sensory channels, it seems stupid not to take advantage of both of them.
I agree the built-in satnav units seem a poor investment. Their maps are extraordinarily expensive and the devices will clearly age faster then the vehicles. Look at all the folks with first generation GM "OnStar" systems who are soon to find their systems abandoned without an update possibility. I also enjoy the ability to move my TomTom from vehicle to vehicle. However as I don't actually carry it with me but just switch it from car to car, or toss it in my luggage and then install it in a rental, I don't really care if it is pocket sized and again, that big clear speaker is a huge feature to me.
Finally, the TomTom GUI is just great. They don't waste large chunks of screen on static 'soft buttons', instead tapping the screen brings up a series of setting screen that are well thought out and easy to operate without lots of attention (though I almost always pull over anyhow.)
Everyone's needs are different, but for a car-based system my TomTom 300 has been the sweet spot for me. Now I'm just looking forward to one of the newer models with updating traffic conditions and it'll be perfect ('til they come out with a model that drives my car for me.)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
0 Results for All-in-one navigation , TomTom GO 910 , Update/Upgrade - virus
Unfortunately we were unable to find any answers that could solve the question you have asked.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Umm, so do they keep a track log of where you have been? Could these trojans be backdoors for downloading those logs? I would like to write this off as paranoid, but that does seem a likely next step for Big Brother.
We are all just people.
They should keep the Trojans in the drug store, stop stuffing them into electronic devices!
After all, when you need them, you got to take apart your GPS device? Geez!
It's not new to you because of where you live. In the US, it's still something of a big deal to have a car with nav. (I suspect less than 10% of cars actually on the road here have it built-in). It wasn't an option when I bought my car, and in fact my parents' new car from the same line is our family's first to have it.
How come positive reviews of products are given such a suspicious eye, that even when the post is from a four-digit ID with a long posting history (and website you can visit to check his credentials), it's seen as astroturfing?
Get a grip, guys.
Get off my launchpad!
Ground Control to Major TomTom. Commencing countdown, engines on.
Or...
Standing there alone, the car is waiting.
"All systems are go." "Are you sure?"
Control is not convinced, but the TomTom
Has the evidence. No need to abort.
The countdown starts.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
As the other replies say, the TomTom runs Linux. But I can tell you that my experience with a Magellan Roadmate GPS and Windows CE, and that has just about all the stability I remember from my long distant days of Windows 98.
I'll be shocked if TomTom get out in front of this issue and proactively try to alert their customer base to the problem.
TomTom does produce a decent product, but they are the epitome of Slack Bastards when it comes to supporting their goods.
It's impossible to reach TomTom on the phone, they tend not to answer e-mail, and their web site is such a muddle that finding updates and information is nearly impossible. They don't even have a user forum. Their web site is so convoluted, even finding out how and where to purchase map updates is an exercise in extreme tedium.
Other than their awful support, TomTom has one other major problem. Their menu navigation is simply awful. TomTom requires far too many selections to access the most common of funcitons. The conventional wisdom of good UI design recommends no common function be more than 3 clicks away from the home menu. In TomTom, one must often dig 6 or 8 levels into the menus to reach the most common of tasks. This is a big problem for a device that is typically used at the same time one is operating a motor vehicle.
I've tried a bunch of GPS street navigation packages and cannot really recommend any of them, each of them have big problems and are works in progress. TomTom would be the best of those currently available if they would just hire some support staff and greatly simplify their overly complicated menu structure. Until they do that, I can't recommend their product.
That users of the infected GPS units will only be able to find their way around in Greece?
Think about the places where those devices get REPAIRED. I've been on both ends of the stick, I'd rather work in the manufacturing plant than the repair depot. The manufacturing plants tend to be cleaner, while the repair depots get really junky. You never know what sorts of seedy CD swapping to test optical drives, or what kind of USB device is plugged in, all kinds of various means of infection.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It can act as usb mass storage and thus be carrying infected files.
Did they export the whole drive, or what? One would expect they'd export an empty file system, onto which one could load music or other content, and provide some means to reset it to empty if it became corrupted.
Try to buy maps for TomTom 5... Can't do it can you? Try to find out how recent the map data is for the various updated maps they are selling. You won't find that either. If you already have TomTom Nav 5 and want the new maps, what should you do? It's a bit clearer now, but for months it was not.
Through trial and error I found out that purchasing new maps for TomTom 5 required a complete software update to TomTom 6. But TomTom refused to say whether version 6 would even run on all the devices that ran system 5. Once again, through trial and error (purchase and hope), I found that that the new update did run on my device. TomTom either didn't take the time to test their software on existing supported devices or they never bothered to put this information on their mess of a web site.
Until very recently, you couldn't even purchase the TomTom navigator 6 software upgrade directly from their site, even though the full product had been shipping to resellers for months.
TomTom's web site and their entire support infrastructure seems almost an afterthought to them. I do think they've got a promising product, but the product's poor menu design and awful support truly holds back what could be a good product.
ahh well that's a little bit clearer now.
too bad it has to be like that... sounds like they could be a better company!
it exports the whole of the sd card, one of the files there is an encapsulated linux boot image. why? because tomtom allow you to update the OS on the machine as well as the maps. when running in usb mass store, the navigation s/w isn't running.
What the hell are you talking about? It runs Linux you idiot (ever heard of that?).
> Clearly, not only is the virus "on the hard drive", but it actually gets executed.
Says WHO? Now you're just making stuff up.
since it runs on linux...
do you think tomtom can be ported to normal x86?
or at least emulated?
'cause it will be a really good app for my carputer, which actually lacks a bit in gps software...
and.. can anyone confirm it is just a usb drive? so you can see all system files, including the tomtom application right?
The notice IS posted on the official tomtom website: http://www.tomtom.com/news/category.php?ID=2&NID=3 49&Language=1
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