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It's Easy To Hack Traffic Lights
An anonymous reader notes coverage of research from the University of Michigan into the ease with which attackers can hack traffic lights. From the article:
As is typical in large urban areas, the traffic lights in the subject city are networked in a tree-type topology, allowing them to pass information to and receive instruction from a central management point. The network is IP-based, with all the nodes (intersections and management computers) on a single subnet. In order to save on installation costs and increase flexibility, the traffic light system uses wireless radios rather than dedicated physical networking links for its communication infrastructure—and that’s the hole the research team exploited. ... The 5.8GHz network has no password and uses no encryption; with a proper radio in hand, joining is trivial. ... The research team quickly discovered that the debug port was open on the live controllers and could directly "read and write arbitrary memory locations, kill tasks, and even reboot the device (PDF)." Debug access to the system also let the researchers look at how the controller communicates to its attached devices—the traffic lights and intersection cameras. They quickly discovered that the control system’s communication was totally non-obfuscated and easy to understand—and easy to subvert.
This was central to the plot of the Italian Job. The real Napster took care of it.
It is scary how many industries (e.g. autos, "smart" electronics, control systems) are decades behind state of the art security. We will have a lot of growing pains to get out "only computer guys need to do this".
Deaths? multiple injured people? Why isn't that secured in the first place? With all the news about stuff getting *hacked*, why are they still doing this?
They are waiting for the first part, because unless there is a big uproar about it (which there won't be until it gets abused enough to cause deaths) it costs too much money to fix.
How this is a surprise to anyone by now is a surprise to me, this has been standard operating procedures with pretty much everyone since computers have come out. That is, security is non existent or an afterthought. Paying money to make sure everything is secure for any sort of attacks/compromise/whatever takes away from the bottom line, so shareholders don't like that stuff. And management is kissing the shareholders ass, so it's not as important.
Now for government work, it's a bidding process and well, you aren't going to make any money on the job by having to hire some sort of computer type to make sure the system is secure. And since the contract probably didn't state it needed to be done, well, this is what we have.
So wait until it gets abused bad enough to kill people, nothing will get done.
Be seeing you...
Red means stop. Do not go. No, no, no. Green in all directions means go. Oh no, Oh no, Oh no.
I remember this crossroads in the 1990s. Would firms in general focus on security, even though the worst threats at that time were college students looking to rm -rf / a box or two for kicks.
It came out worse than I could imagine. I heard the "security has no ROI" mantra many a time (although the past couple places I worked at, they actually take it seriously.) When working as a consultant, I asked companies what they had for something if they were hacked. The response was, "We will call Geek Squad or Infosys, and have the problem fixed."
I have read people hoping for a "Warhol event" that would get businesses focusing on security. However, I would say that a "cyber 9/11" (to use a buzzword" would do far more harm to security in general than help.
Take this scenario:
A hurricane has a populated city in its sights. Evacuations are starting. As people are getting on the roads, Elbonian actors hack the anti-theft disable mechanism of a major car maker, disabling random cars at a time on all major roads. When those are towed, another set of cars get turned off. Havoc happens.
Congress is then pushed to push some bills into law. Well, they do. However, they do little or nothing. Here are the bills:
1: A mandatory DRM stack on any device in the US accessing the Internet, enforced by endpoint routers, with mandatory 10-life if any are tampered with.
2: All "tools for cyber-warfare", even something as banal as tcpdump, would be removed from operating systems, and only allowed to registered people.
3: Similar to #1, all machines would run a scanner similar to an antivirus utility, but would use signatures to look for unlicensed MP3 files, movies, programs like Handbrake, and if detected, would automatically shut the machine down and notify the local authorities.
4: A central ID card, similar to a PIV/CAC would be requires on any/all devices so all transactions (even a web login) are positively identified. It would be a felony for someone to access the Internet without their packets being signed or attributed to an ID card.
Of course, none of this would actually -HELP- security, but it would keep it swept under the covers, and (using MBA speak) allow better monetization of existing revenue streams... i.e. your PC becomes a locked down console with only big name brands able to write software for it due to the legal barriers of entry.
Its easy to exceed the speed limit. Its easy to shop lift. Its easy to buy a gun and shoot somebody.
Its probably easy to build a device that gives you green lights as though you were an emergency vehicle. This is definitely illegal.
While I think its irresponsible to design computer systems without basic and reasonable security measures, technology is not the final answer to antisocial behavior. Hacking somebody else's systems is illegal and wrong. Finding (sometimes ) esoteric ways to do it and making it easy for bad guys is just plain foolish.
My friend Neil and I have a law: You know you have enough security when you can't do your job anymore. Requiring the average stop light electrician to now be a computer networking security expert requiring tons of tech support would certainly drive up taxes.
Antisocial behavior is why we have laws and there is a reason we should obey them.
Greed is the root of all evil.
I was thinking what do they use now. Years ago I remember fire engines and trucks had strobe light on top of cab that flashes sequences which causes traffic light to turn red on opposing traffic. In late 70s or early 80s I saw a Dodge van that was parked in Quement Electronics on Bascom Ave in San Jose (you old guys remember that store, favorite among geeks back in the days when Fry's was a grocery store). I guess this person got ahold of one of these and voila, never gets a red light. Question I always wondered if that was legal.
Fast forward to nowadays, do emergency vehicles use such a system and is it RF based?
mfwright@batnet.com
It's called signal preemption. Opticom is IR-based, and in fairly common use. There are several other systems available for signal preemption, including:
There may be others, but these are the ones I'm familiar with.
Reminds me of the time when that list of crosswalk-button hacks was published - it created quite a stir.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Unfortunately, those sensors sometimes fail. With no "call," then one direction may never get a green light. (Of course, if this happens, then the tech will call an engineer to get a timing plan, then go out and reprogram the faulty controller, if it's not networked.) Freezing conditions, et c. can ruin in-ground loop sensors, and optical sensors can become befuddled by fog, snow and sun. Radar-based sensors are becoming more common, and because they're mounted on an arm or on a pole, they can be replaced more easily than the inductive loops.