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Using Tire Pressure Sensors To Spy On Cars

Posted by kdawson on from the privacy-under-pressure dept.

AngryDad writes "Beginning last September, all vehicles sold in the US have been required to have Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) installed. An article up at HexView enumerates privacy issues introduced by TPMS, and some of them look pretty scary. Did you know that traffic sensors on highways can be adopted to read TPMS data and track individual vehicles? How about an explosive device that sets itself off when the right vehicle passes nearby? TPMS has been discussed in the past, but I haven't seen its privacy implications analyzed before. Fortunately the problem is easy to fix: encrypt TPMS data the way keyless entry systems do."

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:RFID tracking by nguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Using RFID combined with detectors at every street corner will allow for constant surveillance of every car all the time.

    So do license plate readers, and they can operate from greater distances and completely passively. Cost for a license plate reader is about the same as a good RFID reader, and they are probably at least as reliable. Furthermore, you are required to keep your license plate readable.

    Some cities are already starting to implement complete license plate-based tracking of vehicles.

  2. Re:RFID tracking by timeOday · · Score: 3, Informative

    You better tell these guys because their business is OCR'ing license plates. It's not research. I rent cars from Avis in Orlando fairly regularly and they have this option right now.

  3. Re:RFID tracking by afaik_ianal · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course, cars also come with this thing called a "license plate", which can also be tracked remotely and wirelessly.

    I don't know about "wirelessly" unless you are talking about people using their eyeballs. On Australian highways (In my state of New South Wales, at least), we have special cameras located on overpasses and things every couple of hundred kilometres or so. These most definitely detect where the number plates are in the image, cut them out, perform OCR, then record the ones that are on trucks. It's used to enforce the laws preventing truckers from driving too far without sleep, and constant speeding.

    These cameras have been around for over 10 years, and I assure you, are highly accurate.

  4. Probably not a 4/1 story. by gardyloo · · Score: 3, Informative
    Here (at the end of this post) is the text of the applicable document summarizing the TREAD act.
    http://www.tireindustry.org/pdf/TREAD_Act_Summary.pdf

        Looks to me that no one is requiring continual monitoring (and reporting) of tires' conditions; only when the tire pressure falls below 25% of recommended cold pressure is a signal required to be sent (and I see nothing about being able to tell which car in a fleet has the problem from outside the car itself).

        Finally, article summary should say "all NEW vehicles sold in the US" require the system, not "all vehicles sold in the US".

    The final rule was published June 5, 2002. Unfortunately NHTSA
    proposed that if a vehicle is using a direct system (with sensors in each
    tire sending a signal to the dashboard) the TPMS does not have to trigger
    until the tire is 25 percent below the recommended cold psi. An indirect
    TPMS (that runs off the anti-lock braking system) does not have to
    trigger until the tire is 30 percent below the recommended cold psi for
    that tire. TIA is strongly opposed to NHTSA's supposed "safety"
    regulation which in effect allows the motoring public to drive on severely
    underinflated tires. TIA has supported a petition that NHTSA mandate
    reserve inflation pressure in tires to offset the TPMS rule. [See letter to
    NHTSA supporting petition.]