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Report: Watch Dogs Game May Have Influenced Highway Sign Hacking
An anonymous reader writes 'Earlier this month, at least three U.S. states reported that a hacker had broken into electronic road signs above major highways, with the hacker leaving messages for people to follow him on Twitter. The Multi-State Information Sharing an Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) produced an intelligence report blaming a Saudi Arabian hacker that the organization says likely got the idea from Watch Dogs, a new video in which game play revolves around "hacking," with a focus on hacking critical infrastructure-based electronic devices in particular. "Watch Dogs allows players to hack electronic road signs, closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs), street lights, cell phones and other systems. On May 27, 2014, the malicious actor posted an image of the game on his Twitter feed, demonstrating his interest in the game, and the compromise of road signs occurs during game play. CIS believes it is likely that a small percentage of Watch Dogs players will experiment with compromising computers and electronic systems outside of game play, and that this activity will likely affect SSLT [state, local, tribal and territorial] government systems and Department of Transportation (DOT) systems in particular." The signs allowed telnet and were secured with weak or default passwords. The report came out on the same day that The Homeland Security Department cautioned transportation operators about a security hole in some electronic freeway billboards that could let hackers display bogus warnings to drivers.'
Classic example of an idiot confusing causation with correlation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Sometimes the message they need to display changes
people getting fed up with the gov are going on killing sprees. Gov at fault, let ban it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Personally, I've always thought it would be amusing to hack one of those signs and I've never heard of the game "Watch Dogs."
"Help! I'm trapped in a highway sign factory!" is the most obvious message, but I'm sure I could come up with a bunch of random messages to put in...
I heard about road signs being reprogrammed back in the 90s. This is nothing new.
90% of those are called on the father by the vengeful bitch that is trying to punish the father.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Instead of rational articles with headlines something like:
Insecure government process allows trivial unauthorized access to road infrastructure
We get ones focusing on how a game may have encouraged people to hack into the stuff. I don't think it'll ever end.
Video games are the big evil. They are murderer trainers and hacking instructors. They fill our kids with all sort of evil ideas and shows them how to properly and easily do them in the real world.
Fucking twats. People been hacking non electric street signs since those have been coming out. And I'm pretty sure you'll find other peeps have been hacking electric sings way before this (I know I've seen them). What makes this big? Oh ya, a video game came out where you can hack signs. Easy to blame the game, since obviously video games are responsible for the shooting the other day also.
Be seeing you...
with beards!
I am the Commander of The CLIT.
Since when the fuck did the traditional pure metal signs go out of style?
Since we figured out that electronically changing the message on a sign was MUCH more cost effective than printing a new one each time the message changed.
"Road closed from June 1st to June 14th" Oh, shit, now we need one that says "No left turn from 8a-5p until August 1st", I guess will order a new sign...
Also, don't discount the usefulness of re-routing traffic when there is a large planned or unplanned event, like a sports event or an Interstate closing because of a massive wreck.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
No... the real solution is, quit fucking putting such high-tech god damn road signs on the highways. Since when the fuck did the traditional pure metal signs go out of style? The roadsides don't need such expensive hackable junk. In fact, if they're electronic, programmable and have giant screens of some sort, I'd have a hard time even calling them "signs" in the first place. Just go back to the basics. How hard is it to figure out?
Ironically this is the same person who carries around a smartphone and talks shit about road signs being "expensive hackable junk".
Yeah, speaking of going back to basics, how hard is a goddamn land line to use these days? Oh, you NEED social media in the palm of your hand? Ah, OK, yeah got it...rant on Kettle, rant on...
Back when I was a kid the passwords were all "DOT". Then they wised up and changed them all to "DOT1".
I'd hack a sign to say "KISS HER YOU FOOL" or "THAT FELT GOOD". That should make things interesting.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Why blame a game for an issue that has existed for years/decades. Security via obfuscation is not security. Obfuscation is the equivalent of hiding the key under the doormat, and hoping that nobody looks.
The flaw is the trust in existing security. Even if it is know quite well that it is flawed, and easily broken. So what is the easiest solution? As opposed to blaming the completely open and flawed security practices that have been know to be flawed for decades, it is easier to place the blame on what has brought it into the open, than fix the actual problem itself.
The keys to the kingdom are accessible by anybody. We just give them a weird name in hopes that nobody finds it.
You comment on the father/mother bias but not the redneck bias...interesting.
Some guy hacked freeway condition signs in LA with cryptic messages and weather reports, and even installed a set of remote-operable bagpipes in one.
The hacker went to jail later for a series of 419 scams.
Hackers gonna hack right? This guy obviously had the necessary skillset to hack "critical infrastructure" before the game released. I mean unless they want us to believe that anybody inspired by a video game can learn how to hack such things in the span of a little over a month, this guy already had the skillset. So are they implying that the game provided the motivation? Last time I checked, hackers didn't need video games to provide them with motivation. Likely the guy is a fan of Watchdogs both because it is a fun game, and because he is intelligent enough to tie his activities to a popular video game in order to boost his notoriety. Of course a small percentage of fans of the game will experiment with such things. But chances are, these were already people that were likely to do such things. What we can look forward to now is the media going on and on about every single hack like this and trying to tie it to the game. Just waiting for one of these media dinosaurs to come along and talk about how the game is basically hacking practice.
Uplink: Hacker Elite was kewl.
Pffft. Kids have been "hacking" signs for years. I remember when I was a kid, there was a place called Fairy Falls Creek. A couple of my university friends went and made a professional quality sign, in the same colour, and font as the existing sign, and renamed the area to Hairy Balls Creek. The fact that there were round rocks covered in hairy moss made the sign very plausible. So plausible, that after a few years, even the local tourism guides quoted Hairy Balls Creek.
You don't need to be high tech to engage in social engineering and changing signs.
That said, if you're going to make it convenient to change your signs, be sure to make them secure. If you can't ensure your level of security, don't blame a game for your ineptitude.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
the real solution is, quit fucking putting such high-tech god damn road signs on the highways. Since when the fuck did the traditional pure metal signs go out of style?
The Low-tech metal signs are hackable too. Ever heard of this stuff called spray-paint?
It's pretty hard for a kid in Saudi Arabia to spray paint signs all over North America.
You'd be surprised. Most work programs are run by corporations nowadays (I used to work in the IT dept for one). It isn't like the old days where inmates were making products that sold for pennies on the dollar, prices at the company I worked for were good but typically were not that far below the industry averages. And as far as prison control, the inmates who made it into our programs were the low-risk ones that didn't need that much control to begin with. Typically they were "light" criminals with 2 year sentences. The high-risk inmates weren't considered viable for the programs.
They use to shoot people after playing video games.
.. only a few days ago, when a major accident blocks access to every lane, including the exit to another large highway (I-405), except the carpool lane. Having all the road signs telling people to merge to the carpool lane, and the carpool lane was now open to all, is useful.
That said, with respect to the article, I don't understand. You mean to say zombies aren't ahead?
The town of Nimbin in Northern NSW is famous for it's weed, they try to attract tourists from the gold coast, they have a weed museum, fashionable hemp clothing, tourist trinkets, and once a year they have a weed Mardi Gras. It's located in the Tweed valley and the main road out of town leads to a town on the coast called Tweed heads. There's been an uneasy "live and let live" relationship with the local police for decades, the practical outcome is there's much less crime and vandalism than (say) the gold coast.
:)
Having said that, there isn't a single road sign in the district that still has the 'T' intact.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
To connect vital infra-structure as traffic signs to the Internet-at-large?
I don't disagree with you on the quality of the game. Unfortunately, in this case, Ubisoft are laughing all the way to the bank, because it's the fastest selling game not based on an existing IP in history and has posted the best opening weekend sales of any Ubisoft game in history. And this is despite the terrible PC port, the uPlay problems affecting all platforms, the limp plot and character designs that feel straight out of the notebook doodles of a 13 year old who still thinks wearing a trench-coat makes you cool and the laughable implementation of the core "hacking" concept.
So sure, while it would be nice to think that Ubisoft is sitting there feeling sad and desperate, it's simply not true.
But if you're reading this and thinking you need something shiny and new to play on your PC or new PS4/Xbox One, then be advised that the new Wolfenstein is a far better game in every respect (an actual proper shooter, rather than a 2-gun corridor game).
When will these assholes in charge, stop blaming anything besides themselves and their own department, when explaining issues with theis own department/system?