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Using Tire Pressure Sensors To Spy On Cars
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."
Sorry, Couldn't resist.
This isn't an 4/1 joke, is it?
Especially this part:
How about an explosive device that sets itself off when the right vehicle passes nearby?
Great, first I have to worry about the tolls on I-44 through Oklahoma, now I got to worry about exploding vehicles?
Maybe in the future we can all roll to work in giant hamster balls. Getting groceries home will be a bitch tho...
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Tires already come with RFID tags, which can also be read and tracked remotely. Cars probably also emit all sorts of other unique signals that can be recognized and tracked.
Of course, cars also come with this thing called a "license plate", which can also be tracked remotely and wirelessly.
Basically, if you drive, you can be tracked.
Outside of Lebanon, I don't see this as being a huge concern. (And calling it a "privacy" issue seems a bit of an understatement.) The local governments aren't sufficiently motivated to fill potholes, let alone install IEDs specifically targeted at me.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The government won't use this information to track you down to that seedy little motel on the side of route 9, where you cavort with no less than 3 women other than your wife. We only care about catching bad guys. Your wife however...
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I'm having trouble grasping the concepts, can someone put it into a nice analogy using cars? What... wait... damnit.
The solution is even easier than encryption. Just don't broadcast a unique identifier!
... making me wonder if this is just an elaborate 4/1 hoax.
In this case there's no reason for each tire pressure sensor to be broadcasting one. All they need to do is chirp back the pressure inside the tire. That's it. Give them enough power to hit a receiver located in the wheel (which might be 4-6" away in a very large tire, probably a lot closer than that, and it's all inside the steel-belted tire) and call it a day. Unless you are playing Ben Hur, you're not going to get close enough to another car's tires for it to become a problem -- use a high frequency and you're going to get a substantial bit of attenuation via the tire itself, and then you're decreasing as the square of the distance through free space. You're never going to have more than one valve-stem sensor per wheel-mounted receiver, so why bother with it?
If you really do need a weak form of identification, rather than hardcoding a UID, it would be pretty trivial to have each sensor randomly choose a number from a range such that the chance of collisions was low (deriving the randomness from resistor noise or by oversampling whatever analog sensor they use to determine pressure) and reset periodically or each time the car is started. That eliminates the problem of having to coordinate UIDs and prevent duplicates (cf. the cheap Bluetooth transceivers that caused problems because their MAC-ish addresses were all zeros). Every unit can be completely identical.
On further consideration, I can't really imagine why the designers of the TPMS would have given each sensor a UID (especially since it would probably cause confusion when you rotate tires, if the car's computer tracks them)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.]
I'm glad to see that there's other right-minded folk like me on here! Keep up the good work Mr. Transporter!
I know 1 person with on star, and they were in a bad accident, having the OnStar saved her life.
Clearly OnStar causes accidents.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The article asks why would NHTSA choose TPMS and not run-flat technology. Run-flat tires cannot be used indefinitely while uninflated or underinflated. Generally, in such situations the sidewall supports the load, and the resulting stress on the sidewall damages it, eventually leading to failure. Furthermore, you might not be able to see that the tire isn't properly inflated. In order to prevent people from driving on underinflated run-flat tires until a catastrophic failure and possible accident, TPMS is required. Oh, and run-flat tires have other disadvantages too.
There is a big difference between tracking tires, license plates, etc. and tracking people.
In what way is tracking a person's possessions NOT a damned effective way of tracking the person?!?!
Do complete strangers drive your car often? So you see no need for concern until a tracking device is implanted directly into your skull?