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Hacking a 'Smart' Sniper Rifle
An anonymous reader writes: It was inevitable: as soon as we heard about computer-aimed rifles, we knew somebody would find a way to compromise their security. At the upcoming Black Hat security conference, researchers Runa Sandvik and Michael Auger will present their techniques for doing just that. "Their tricks can change variables in the scope's calculations that make the rifle inexplicably miss its target, permanently disable the scope's computer, or even prevent the gun from firing." In one demonstration they were able to tweak the rifle's ballistic calculations by making it think a piece of ammunition weighed 72 lbs instead of 0.4 ounces. After changing this value, the gun tried to automatically adjust for the weight, and shot significantly to the left. Fortunately, they couldn't find a way to make the gun fire without physically pulling the trigger.
How is this worthy of a Black Hat anything? If you take a device, turn on WiFi, then you use the default password, then you can change things over the WiFi connection? Go home, "hackers", you're drunk.
Next up, nuclear weapons can be accessed when you tell the army guarding them to go home, and leave the doors when they leave.
What they are saying is: If you reprogram a computer, you can get it do to the wrong thing!
I could mess up any computer by going through the config files or even recompiling binaries to intentionally break stuff.
It gets more interesting if they could show how to do this remotely on a real battlefield instead of just taking a device and acting all shocked that it behaves differently when reprogrammed.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I'm not sure what they were going for. Trying to make it seem scary that someone could hack the rifle? Anyone with a some knowledge about the firearms industry and military behaviors knows this thing wasn't going to get in the hands of anyone official in any near future, if ever at all. That leaves glunters (my own variation on "glamping"). Guys with fancy toys out hunting, who SHOULD know that if something that made your bullet go off track a mere few feet somehow makes the shot now dangerous, then you shouldn't have been taking in the first place anyway.
Added to all that is the reality that Tracking point is probably done for. Maybe the IP will resurface, but I doubt they will.
Every redneck knows how: Just clean it.
Have gnu, will travel.
The company filed bankruptcy a few months ago. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...
He also pointed out that the Wi-Fi range of the hack would limit its real-world use. âoeItâ(TM)s highly unlikely when a hunter is on a ranch in Texas, or on the plains of the Serengeti in Africa, that thereâ(TM)s a Wi-Fi internet connection,â he says. âoeThe probability of someone hiding nearby in the bush in Tanzania are very low.â
High-gain directional antenna what what? They've got hills in Texas, too, little-known fact.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And how are you contributing to that 'reasonable discussion'? Hmmmm?
Anyone who ever says "we are incapable of having a reasonable discussion on X" really means "everyone doesn't just accept my opinion on X as gospel, poor me".
This would be ideal! If we prevent all the guns from firing, no more war! Any technology that could neutralize all weapons would be most welcome.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I thought this would be a bad idea from the first time I heard about it, just like all the other "smart" guns. Makes it entirely too easy for NSA types to remotely disable weapons, and they have access to a lot better equipment than Sandvik & Auger do.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
because in Murica we are incapable of having reasonable discussion regarding guns.
"Reasonable discussion" usually just means "my ideas are reasonable, and yours aren't, and as long as you're disagreeing with my ideas, you're being unreasonable."
https://youtu.be/p47eWpzzGtY?t...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
From your link:
"he expectation from a number of different sites is that TrackingPoint will soon be filing for bankruptcy."
Did they? Nothing seems to say they actually did, The homepage doesn't say anything about not taking orders...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It could also mean that someone could propose something that everyone should be against (a gun that can only kills kids) and expect people to use rhetorical devices (attacking the motivation of the person proposing the extreme example) instead of conceding that maybe someone could rightfully oppose the legality of such a weapon. But thanks for proving my point.
r in ur gunz nao
Fortunately, they couldn't find a way to make the gun fire without physically pulling the trigger.
That's because there's no computer-controlled mechanism to fire the gun. The computer controlled mechanisms literally *prevent* firing unless/until the gun is aimed at the marked target. This is contrary to certain (inaccurate) descriptions of the device which claim the computer actually controls the firing pin.
“There’s a message here for TrackingPoint and other companieswhen you put technology on items that haven’t had it before, you run into security challenges you haven’t thought about before.”
They waited till the end of the article to put the most important part? "If you ware going to hook something up to any network you might want to at least think about security"
is that you won't know it's there before you've been shot.
I suppose if you see someone planning to shoot a third party you might manage to hack their rifle, but there's several ways to interfere with sniping if you can manage to be behind the sniper.