Disgruntled Ex-Employee Remotely Disables 100 Cars

hansamurai writes "Over one hundred cars equipped with a Webtech Plus blackbox were remotely disabled when a former employee of dealership Texas Auto Center got hold of his employer's database of users. Webtech Plus is repossession software that allows the dealership to disable a car's ignition or trigger the horn to honk when a payment is due. Owners had to remove the battery to stop the incessant honking. After the dealership began fielding an unusually high number of calls from upset car owners, they changed the passwords to the Webtech Plus software and then traced the IP address used to access the client to its former employee."

Comments

Re:So...

[tomhudson]

How long until the police/feds/intelligence/etc get to start using this on civilians?

They already are. See the latest OnStar commercials. If they're chasing you and you don't stop, they can either slow your car down, kill it, and/or make it start honking and flashing lights. And they can keep you locked in your car.

They've also been caught using it to spy on people by activating the voice channel.

Never buy a vehicle with OnStar.

Re:I don't understand

[tomhudson]

To be fair, there are plenty of used car dealers who don't overcharge but do sell to not-terribly-reliable clients. They need a way to get their vehicle back when those clients quit paying.

Here, let me fix that for you:

"To be fair, there are plenty of used car dealers who overcharge when they sell not-terribly-reliable cars to not-terribly-reliable clients. They need a way to get their vehicle back when those clients quit paying so they can flip them to the next sucker."

40% or more a year interest, extra fees, inflated "deposits" that are inevitably forfeited as soon as the sucker is one day late, the car repoed and the customer STILL owes the full amount as damages, "it's not a sale, it's a lease - at the end you can buy it for $100.00" - when at the end it's $100 + fees.

It's the auto equivalent of pay-day loans.

Re:So...

[YrWrstNtmr]

And do you have any evidence that those things have been used when the owner is driving the car (even if wanted by the police) or only when the car is reported stolen?

Sure. Case in Las Vegas. Note that the FBI's use was not deemed illegal/inappropriate, but rather that it denied the user/owner of use during that time.

Re:I don't understand

[sodul]

I suppose you are trolling but I'll answer your question: it is because there is a higher risk they will never see their money back. If you lend money to 100 people and 10% of them will not repay you, you cannot expect to gain anything if the loan rate is under 10% do you ? If you take an other set of 100 people where you expect only 1% of non payment then you can give them a much better rate.
It just happen that people with large disposable income are less likely to default on a loan.

Re:I don't understand

[tomhudson]

They were pulling numbers out of their asses. The Harvard study says it's a lot worse. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w5.63/DC1

Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more likely than other debtors to experience lapses in coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick.

and

Debtors with private insurance at the onset of their illnesses had even higher out-of-pocket costs than those with no insurance (Exhibit 5). This paradox is explained by the very high costs--$18,005--incurred by patients who initially had private insurance but lost i

Just look at the "out-of-pocket" expenses - and keep in mind that this doesn't include having to continue to pay insurance premiums while losing revenue because you're ill ,,, url:http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/vol0/issue2005/images/data/hlthaff.w5.63/DC1/Himmelstein_Ex5.gif?