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Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware (vice.com)
Tractor owners across the country are reportedly hacking their John Deere tractors using firmware that's cracked in Easter Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums. The reason is because John Deere and other manufacturers have "made it impossible to perform 'unauthorized' repair on farm equipment," which has obviously upset many farmers who see it "as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time," reports Jason Koebler via Motherboard. As is the case with most modern-day engineering vehicles, the mechanical problems experienced with the newer farming tractors are often remedied via software. From the report: The nightmare scenario, and a fear I heard expressed over and over again in talking with farmers, is that John Deere could remotely shut down a tractor and there wouldn't be anything a farmer could do about it. A license agreement John Deere required farmers to sign in October forbids nearly all repair and modification to farming equipment, and prevents farmers from suing for "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment [...] arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software." The agreement applies to anyone who turns the key or otherwise uses a John Deere tractor with embedded software. It means that only John Deere dealerships and "authorized" repair shops can work on newer tractors. "If a farmer bought the tractor, he should be able to do whatever he wants with it," Kevin Kenney, a farmer and right-to-repair advocate in Nebraska, told me. "You want to replace a transmission and you take it to an independent mechanic -- he can put in the new transmission but the tractor can't drive out of the shop. Deere charges $230, plus $130 an hour for a technician to drive out and plug a connector into their USB port to authorize the part." "What you've got is technicians running around here with cracked Ukrainian John Deere software that they bought off the black market," he added.
As is the case with most tech products, they try to reduce you to a user, not an owner. Maybe the farmers were tired of the tractor stopping in the middle of the field, and starting projecting ads on the windscreen while downloading an upgrade.
Surely, liability is way more important that get things done. I guess that's why electronics has become a golden cage and the times of hacking ataris/commodore/spectrums is long gone. That's what's making society dumber.
The problem with a company like John Deere is they loose touch with their customers. John Deere obviously forgot that they service the farmer not the other way around. This too me would have a negative affect on new equipment purchases as well. Growing up in a farming community I know that many farmers do a lot of their own maintenance on equipment. Like any of us saving a little money and avoiding driving that big tractor to a dealer seems like a no brainer. Sadly this kind of behavior is happening to cars and trucks too, where the manufacture wants to lock the DIY out of fixing their cars.
Bollocks.
If you buy property is yours you should be able to do whatever you want with it.
Regarding the restrictive "contract" the farmer has to sign, that should be illegal.
One possible way around might be if the farmer's wife buys tractor, then farmer's wife sells tractor to farmer. Farmer is not then bound to the contract someone else signed for property he bought from his wife on the second hand market.
I'm British and very economically left wing (no not liberal in any sense of the word) but private property belongs to you not the shitty corporation that made it. Corporations have too much power thanks to liberal economics.
Liability is with the owner, because he was forced to sign a contract that makes him liable for anything.
There, fixed that for you.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I've always wanted to visit Easter Europe, but can't find it on a map...
hacking their John Deere tractors using firmware that's cracked in Easter Europe
Let's hope there are no Easter Eggs in there.
Sig?
The owner of the tractor. Sorry, I have to be specific in this time and age: The person who paid good money to use a tractor that the manufacturer still thinks is theirs.
Just like the way it has always been.
The main difference being that if you use "original" firmware, rest assured that NOBODY will be liable. If anything, JD will certainly have a way to brush it off on the farmer anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Is John Deere legally liable if an UNMODIFIED tractor malfunctions and hurts someone? Nope, that's right there in the summary of the license agreement. Why do you think THAT will change because of modified firmware?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Time for competition to form the Open Tractor consortium. Components chosen for easy market access, easy repair and open source firmware. Tractor design for easy component access, with signature checks and protected registering for sabotage prevention. "I didn't change the autonomous driving and insecticide spreading components. Why does it tell me so? Aha, hackers employed by the envious cousin, next farm!"
Bearing in mind that the summary talks about not being able to take a machine to an independent mechanic to have a transmission replaced I'd guess few to none, unless independent mechanics somehow charge for neither time nor parts.
If this were rented equipment, I would understand the company's stance. But if someone outright buys an item, it's theirs. Stop legally binding people to stupid shit when they decide to fork out their hard-earned money for your products. Just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it has to be the norm. Christ.
I tend to rant.
Liability is with the owner, because that's common fucking sense.
The owner is, and remains, John Deere. The farmer is renting it, and agreeing to pay its bills.
These tractors from the Indian company are pretty good, all old school, old tech. No fancy nancy software controlled stuff. Simple rugged diesel engine and clearly understandable mechanical parts. Apparently it is competing well in South Africa with other global giant farm equipment companies, due to "fix it and run it in the bush several hundred miles from the nearest repair shop" ability. Sub compact models are available in USA too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The more this shit spreads out from the software world, the sooner it ends.
I've read it, and it is mimicking that through idiotic and restrictive End User License Agreements. For the software.
There is no explicit clause that forbids tinkering with the hardware, but that seems to be enforced by the software. As in, change a part that has a microcontroller and it won't work without a John Deere technician coming and authorizing it.
Besides, if I read paragraph 13 correctly, the owner of the tractor has to indemnify John Deere and its dealers against all and any lawsuits, even if John Deere or the dealer is at fault for the cause of the lawsuit. That goes beyond everything I've seen in software EULAs so far. Those usually demand only indemnification against lawsuits that arise out of actions by the owner.
C - the footgun of programming languages
No, libertarians are the ones that believe that oppression is too important to be left to the government and should be handled more efficiently by the private sector.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As an engineer in a big multi-national I also see similar things going on in our company.
They try to prevent untrained/unauthorized technicians from doing what we call "low-level" maintenance even though our equipment might be of vital importance of that buyer.
In our company this is not necessary bad intent towards the customer, but more a way of protection our own business because selling only gives you 1 paycheck, service gives you hundreds in the course of years.
Our machines are pretty comparable in complexity to modern tractors I believe as years of research and development have made it so they are of higher quality for the customer. This does not immediately relate to longer life times of our products but does improve on requirements because of new industry, government & environmental standards.
But it also makes it harder to do a correct maintenance if you don't know the complete working of the machines.
Anyways, I don't want to justify John Deer's way of working, or any other car manufacturer ( because that seems to be the case here in Europe), but I do understand their position better.
The customer should be informed when they buy a product that their new product can only be maintained by the approved technicians, there for the EULA probably that has been forced onto the farmers.
I also don't know how the market competition is for farming vehicles in USA, Europe or the rest of the world.
And I think that part should be fixed then, if there is no (reasonable) competition/alternative for the farmers then there is a problem there.
Actually a sane legal system (still not the USA) does not permit you to sign your legal rights. You can sign a contract claiming that you are waving your legal rights but those clauses are null and void as far as the courts are concerned.
That's a different conversation. If you modify the tractor in a way that is unsupported by the manufacturer, you void the warranty and John Deere is released from responsibility. It's not at all unlike your TV, or your cell phone, or millions of other products on the market. But what we're talking about here goes well beyond that. John Deere and other manufacturers are lobbying government to make law out of the notion that while you might have paid upward of a quarter million for that tractor (not an unusual sum with modern agriculture equipment), you don't actually own it, and you're not allowed to do anything with it that John Deere doesn't expressly allow.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
The US definition of "liberal" and "conservative" are going the way their definition of "socialist" went a long time ago: The gutter.
They define it by the loonie fringe groups. Being a liberal means that you're somehow in SJW territory, and being conservative means you have to agree with the Westboro Baptist Church bullshit. The idea that most people belong to NEITHER camp but are actually moderates, close to the center and generally ok with accepting some things the "other side" has to say and give it at least a whirl as a thought experiment, i.e. the notion that it could actually be that the "opponent" is RIGHT with some of the things he's saying, that's become a completely alien concept.
Because if you don't toe the party line and drink the cool-aid, you're one of THEM!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mommy's little angel is such a good little child. Look how he only does exactly what he's told by the nice bureaucrats.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Regarding the right for owners to have a choice in how their machines are serviced...
In Europe there is legislation coming into effect in July 2021 which will requires OEMs to provide information to 3rd parts service tool manufacturers and Independent Operators such that they can achieve the same level of diagnostic capability as the OEM with their own tools.
See links like:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal...
http://www.cema-agri.org/publi...
In the U.S. there is no equivalent legislation in the U.S., but I would not be surprised if we see something similar in a few years. There are groups lobbying to this end, such as;
http://repair.org/association/
Disclaimer: I work for one of the 'other' Ag manufacturers on the topic of making the machines comply with this legislation
My job description says my place in society is to hack equipment I did not design or develop.
May I be present when you discuss with my CEO why his CISO can't pentest and risk assess the tools he's supposed to roll out company-wide?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Speaking from experience; they do this because a large portion of their profits are made in repairs. If you are a farmer and you only have a few weeks to get your crops planted and your equipment breaks down you will pay way more than what the repair is actually worth if you are losing money each day it's not in operation, in fact you may even be looking at bankruptcy and ruin all because the local dealerships wants $$$$ for a repair that should cost $$$ You will pay the extra money because the alternative is worse
Farmers should organize an event to burn old non repairable John Deer equipment and advertise their purchase of non John Deer equipment. And further sell t-shirts about how John Deer is no friend to the American farmer. Do this at the Forth of July celebrations. And have town hall meetings with speakers telling their Horror Stories about John Deer. Find another manufacturer and help promote them over John Deer. Some of them might even give you a deal on a trade in if you publicly destroy your John Deer. Do not stop until everyone currently on the board of directors and otherwise that are running the company are completely replaced.
In the meantime get the right to repair laws on the books.
And yet they continue to buy John Deere products, perpetuating the cycle.
Actually, sane legal systems have a provision against underhanded practices like that.
Our legal system actually knows a few "non-negotiable rights" you have in a contract, no matter whether the contract tries to void them, you have them. You can for example not waive the right to enforce a contract against your contractual partner (i.e. making it a one-sided contract where only one side can hold the other side to fulfillment).
Funny enough, the provision could best be translated as "protection against immoral clauses" ("contra bonos mores" for the legal geeks here).
And our judges tend to enforce such things quite broadly if they feel you try to bullshit your business partner. Or, worse, the judge.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Is John Deere legally liable if an UNMODIFIED tractor malfunctions and hurts someone? Nope, that's right there in the summary of the license agreement. Why do you think THAT will change because of modified firmware?
Like most here, you don't understand how US law really works. My best friend is a lawyer, we've known each other since college, and he's taught me a lot over the years. One of the things he's taught me is that when you sign an agreement that says you sign away your rights, that doesn't necessarily mean you actually have signed away your rights. There are various ways around this kind of thing, including arguing something that amounts to saying that John Deere coerced you into signing that and you had no choice but to agree. Also, you seem to not realize that once you get to court, anything is possible. Depending on how good the lawyers are, the judge's personal involvement in the case (whether he/she steers the jury with comments or leaves them alone to do whatever they will), and the jury itself, any kind of verdict is possible.
Naw. Libertarians believe that companies that oppress users will fail in the marketplace. (Let me know when John Deere, Microsoft, and Apple oppress their way out of the marketplace). I kinda like libertarians. They are often nice people who mean well. And they are frequently quite good on civil liberty issues. But they are remarkably slow learners.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Libertarians believe very strongly in property rights and that one of government's most important functions is to preserve property rights:
https://www.lp.org/platform/
The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected..
I don't know of any Libertarian that would consider a tractor, whole or in part, that would belong to John Deere after a farmer has voluntarily paid for it.
The Left/Right divide has gotten ridiculous, to the point where being a moderate makes you the enemy of just about everyone.
Besides, if I read paragraph 13 correctly, the owner of the tractor has to indemnify John Deere and its dealers against all and any lawsuits, even if John Deere or the dealer is at fault for the cause of the lawsuit. That goes beyond everything I've seen in software EULAs so far. Those usually demand only indemnification against lawsuits that arise out of actions by the owner.
The thing about EULA's is that you can put anything you like in there. You can demand the forfeiture of their first born if you like. What matters is what a court of law will enforce, EULA's are CYA memos, not legally enforceable contracts.
What is enforceable depends on how bad the courts are in your area.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes, but to do this, you have to actually go to court which is an insurmountable obstacle in many cases and fails to provide timely relief in others.
I can't tell if your post is tongue in cheek and hence quite funny in a dry sort of way, or ignorant of the features common to modern farm machinery. Modern tractors do indeed have fancy dashboards, GPS, and mandated speed restrictions. Modern farm machinery is getting rather close to autonomous activities like we see in passenger vehicles for public highways. Many machines can be started at the beginning of a row and then will proceed down the row on its own, automatically turn at the end and return along the next row, guided by GPS the whole way. The idea being to more precisely control fuel consumption, pesticide applications and so on.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
He's either somebody you meet at a stag party, or the guy your aunt eloped with.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In many jurisdictions EULAs are extremely hard to enforce because the user is forced to agree before they have knowledge of what they are agreeing to, i.e. before they have even tried the software. I would assume the same with this but unfortunately the story is about the US which has an extremely draconian attitude to such things.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
You cannot be moderate.
You're instantly lumped into one side. Say you don't agree with something Trump said and you have to be a SJW. Say that no, you don't think their position is true, get asked why you hate minorities and how long you've been a member of the KKK. Explain that you sure as hell don't agree with the alt-right (whatever that may mean now, anyway, since nobody ever really explained to me what alt-right really meant, and whether it's the opposite of ctrl-left, which doesn't do anything either, at least on my keyboard... but I ramble) and we're back at being asked whether you enjoy sucking Laci Green's femdick and how much money you dumped on Sarkeesian.
And don't you DARE to say that you don't care much about either of them. At best, the board moderator will block you for a week for starting a flame war...
Not wanting any part of that mudslinging just isn't possible anymore. Not being part of one bullshit movement automatically means you MUST be in the other, equally insane, one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not sure if it is the case in the US, but where I live, I can not sign away my rights to file a lawsuit if I wanted to and my life depended on it.
"Be he SAID he wouldn't sue." would be laughed at so hard in court and would make you guilty almost by default.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Somalia is libertarian. Limited government, those with wealth can afford private armies, and wealth dictates who wins nearly all the time. This is why there are no functional intentionally defined libertarian governments on earth.
The US (and not just them, that cancer is spreading) has to relearn that politics is not a matter of black and white (and no, I don't mean it in any racial sense, dammit!). Politics is a lot of shades of grey and you can actually think that one idea from politician A is good while you disagree with his position on topic B and think that someone from a different political spectrum is right. That is actually possible!
Also, disagreeing with A doesn't mean that you agree with B. I think Hillary is a despicable bitch who is by no means in touch with anything that matters to the average Joe out there, but that doesn't mean that I think that Trump has all the answers. Or Sanders for that matter. I do think that skin color, heritage, upbringing or gender should not matter when it comes to your chance to accomplish anything, but that does neither mean that I think we should wallow in collective white guilt and bend over backwards to hand out freebies to "underprivileged" people who think they're entitled to handouts because they are $minority, nor does it mean that I think that everything is absolutely peachy and we have total equality already anyway just 'cause our law books say we should.
I also think that I have no right to say that you have to be the gender your dangly (or not so dangly) bits convey, but I refuse to be yelled at for "assuming a gender". I do know a few transgender people, and I know what bullshit they have to go through, but EVERY SINGLE ONE of them is going out of their way to make absolutely CERTAIN you KNOW what gender they identify as. They are essentially the living stereotype of their gender, just to make sure that people, at least those that do care, address them correctly. Funny enough, none of them ever got into a hissy fit over being "mis-gendered", the most you'd get is a "please, I'd prefer he/I'd prefer she". And guess what, it works.
But I digress.
What we see in politics, and people, is what I'd identify as overcompensation. You don't want people to think you could maybe take position A, so you go WAY overboard and take position B to grotesque lengths and, and this is more the problem, accept that people do that. And that's in my opinion the problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's Jalopnik, a site that has decided that every single part of any German car will fail every five minutes and will cost $1 million to replace
They are essentially correct. Check out for example the typical longevity of and replacement cost for the vaunted S-Class air suspension. The parts are still too new to chance getting from third parties, so you have to go to the dealer. If you don't have a very good relationship with them, you're into thousands per corner.
despite the fact that their conclusions are mostly based on a small number of American-market models with a very shady service history and lots of aftermarket parts
You should be able to buy aftermarket parts. If the design requires insanely fancy-pants parts, it's not a good one. For example, the chain tensioners in the 40V 4.2 liter Audi V8. The 32V engine doesn't have VVT, so it doesn't have them, and it's considerably more durable as a result. Both have the same stupid Flennor/Gates timing belt with a 60k lifespan. California mandates that timing belts have a 90k lifespan, Audi said "sure whatever" and rated it for 90k. It's the same belt. Chains or gears forever. But that's apparently too noisy for luxury. I'd be better off with a LS motor, which has none of these considerations and yet is just as efficient.
in the real world, German cars tend to be the most reliable
They tend to be the most expensive. That is, they require a lot of dollars invested to make them reliable. I've got a full service history on a 1997 A8 Quattro to show how and why that is the case. In spite of that I've been going through an epic to transfer its transmission into a 1998 that I got as a parts car. It's got half the miles on it, and it's in nicer condition in general inside and out. If I weren't capable of doing this stuff myself, it would make more sense to just buy something else, because it would cost too much to have it done even by an independent mechanic to justify given the low, low value of the vehicle. And its value is in turn low not just because of its age, but because of the expense in servicing it.
The average person would love to be driving something like this around now that it's been handed down from someone who could afford to absorb the expense of its initial depreciation, but they can't afford the maintenance to keep it from disintegrating. It's two hundred bucks in crankcase vent breather hoses I worked around with silicone hose and a right angle fitting, and thirty bucks for a little y-shaped vacuum hose I went ahead and bought, and the headrests don't go up and down because the drive flex cable jacket stretched over time due to heat cycling and has to be shortened and the rear sun shade has come unglued and is catching on the rear parcel shelf and the arm rests tend to crack and Audi would like a thousand dollars for one but you can often pick up a pair of them from the facelift model for a couple hundred and the list goes ever on and on.
I've been talking about Audi for a long while, but I also own a 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD (W126) and guess what? Mercedes is doing its level best to kill off the platform. You can get basically all the parts for cars which are older than the W126 from the Mercedes Classics parts program, but there are a number of parts for the W126 which you can no longer get new from anyone for any price. The primary example which is going to kill off these cars is the locks. Mercedes does not sell ignition locks at all any more, and an otherwise fully matched lock set will set you back painfully. No one is re-keying these locks or making fresh keys, either, but that doesn't really matter because while it had at the time the strongest column lock ever devised for a production auto, the lock itself is beyond flimsy. It also only took me about an hour and a half to figure out how to remove a completely failed and jammed lock and column locking mechanism from my car and then do it start to finis
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'd imagine no-one would want to buy a used tractor with these restrictions - hell, reselling one may well be against the licensing agreement.
A search engine indicates that New Holland seem to have a similar market share to John Deere, and that there are several other smaller manufacturers. Why would anyone buy John Deere under these circumstances?
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
The high end tractors they are really talking about are only available from 2 manufacturers. Modern Farmers are going to pull a chisel point plow, Disk Rippers, Clump busters and a cultipacker 60 feet wide in one pass over 5,000 acres, with a tractor that has 500 drawbar HP; next day pull a planter 120 feet wide.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Not sure if it is the case in the US, but where I live, I can not sign away my rights to file a lawsuit if I wanted to and my life depended on it.
"Be he SAID he wouldn't sue." would be laughed at so hard in court and would make you guilty almost by default.
Most countries including the US has laws against fake legalise that is intended to scare other people away from suing. This is actually illegal almost everywhere, it is just not enforced, and the lack of enforcement is building precedence.
Enforcement of legal contracts is one of the few "legitimate" areas for the Government to be involved in, according to most Libertarian types I have spoken with. The proper role for the Government and courts is to act as the armed enforcement agents for the corporations.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
That's it.
A lot of people don't realize that click-through agreements are mostly unenforceable because they're almost all one-sided contracts.
When you purchase a product, it's your to use. This right is enshrined in all kinds of law in both the US and Canada.
So "click OK to agree to the EULA/contract" is attempting to impose restriction without commensurate compensation. You already have the right to use the software, regardless of whether or not you click OK, so the EULA is not providing you any compensation. That makes it invalid, except when tied to services that you don't own.
But I'd be happy to see a new law introduced (in Canada, at least) that explicitly outlaws EULAs for everything non-service related, and severe restrictions on service agreements as well.
Hell, make onerous service contract agreements themselves taxable assets.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
If you modify the tractor in a way that is unsupported by the manufacturer, you void the warranty and John Deere is released from responsibility. It's not at all unlike your TV, or your cell phone, or millions of other products on the market.
The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 disagrees with you. Go read it.
The liberals (at least here in the USA) aren't the ones worshiping the "invisible hand", those are the libertarians.
I'd research alternatives to John Deere. I think there are actually some, right? If there are, I'd go to the Deere dealers first. I'd take my time, chat up the sales guy, get all the way to what looks like a closed sale. Then just as I'm about to sign I'd back out and tell him why. Waste their sales guy's time, and tell all your buddies to do it too.
If all of the companies are pulling this shit, it might be time for another tractorcade like we had in the 70s. Block the Beltway and turn up the turf on the Mall like they did back then. Maybe that'll get their attention.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?