WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 44860812

(no title)

justforfunhere | 6 months ago

I know of some modern vehicles that will not start at all if you go about removing the telematics unit.

I am not sure how long will it take before you will not be able to buy a vehicle at all without having to consent to being monitored remotely 24x7, but it will happen sooner than later. And this coming from a developing country. Pretty sure it is much worse in the developed world.

I guess the market for second hand older vehicles might see an uptick because of this and might also see a boom in demand for expertise of maintaining and rejuvenating such vehicles.

discuss

order

farmdve|6 months ago

I am actually fascinated by car electronics. I had heavily modified the software on mine, but it was easier than modern stuff, no encryption of the code, and even the checksum code only triggered a DTC with no consequences.

The only module that was encrypted was the main module, but it if you knew the security PIN you could do what you wanted. It was determined by people that if you observed the jitter of the CAN line fast enough, you could leak the pin via a side channel attack.

But modern car electronics are encrypted, and some probably have security processors that might trigger some irreversible states if you tamper with them. Modern cars are basically as locked up as a PS5.

justforfunhere|6 months ago

I am fascinated by what you are saying and would love to read more about it. How did you go about modifying the software of some part of your car.

Having worked in this field, I can confirm that most such parts these days come with chip supported read/write protections for part of flash that contain the code. But even with no protections, I think that being able to modify embedded firmware is a feat in itself.

nyarlathotep_|6 months ago

> I had heavily modified the software on mine, but it was easier than modern stuff, no encryption of the code, and even the checksum code only triggered a DTC with no consequences.

What's the vintage of the vehicle? When I was in the 'car enthusiast' phase of my life ECU "reflash/remaps/tunes" were very popular and still happen on more 'modern' cars.

ezarowny|6 months ago

Mazda? Their entire infotainment is just HTML and JavaScript which was quite a shock to discover.

zeroflow|6 months ago

It seems to be coming in multiple waves from multiple sides.

One of those is EUs ISA: First a display, now a warning and later actual interference with the driver.

And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car. But there will be some time where no alternatives exist.

gambiting|6 months ago

>>And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car.

Just to be clear - I hate these systems. They are unnecessary, don't improve safety, and increase the cost of new cars for everyone.

But, no system in any car works the way you described it. Even if the car recognizes a speed limit sign from an adjecent street(which happens all the time and I have experienced it too) - the only thing that will happen is that it will bong at you, it won't do "an emergency stop". The more hardcore version of the EU laws around it will require cars to stop applying throttle when going faster than the limit, but literally no legislation proposed or implemented now or in the future requires the cars to actively slow down(ie - apply brakes without your input).

jinzo|6 months ago

I'm sure you are overestimating what an average car buyer cares about when buying the car. From the world where people pay for listening devices to put into their homes, small tracking devices they can stick into everything and so forth. Maybe if it becomes 'fashionable' to worry about privacy, and even then it'll be because it is popular not because majority will become privacy conscious. Unfortunately.

I think stronger regulations, protections and security is the way forward. Not going against the flow, as that is unfortunately a lost battle.

_heimdall|6 months ago

I had looked into removing the OnStar unit in my first gen Chevy Volt when I bought it a few years ago. I had found the same information, if I removed it the car would have all kinds of weird behavior.

Unrelated to removing telematics, but I've also had it go completely insane when the 12V battery us even slightly low. Chevy puts their cars into a battery saver mode that disables a bunch of systems, then it throws error messages for all the disabled systems needing service.

Makes me really appreciate my 1980s pickup truck. The last owner had the dealership clean out the gas tank and their mechanic forgot to reattach the fuel pump's ground. It was happy, but even that didn't stop it from running.

myself248|6 months ago

If you're thinking of OnStar, it's because removing the module breaks the MOST ring. Bypass the ring around the missing module and you'll get some DTCs but everything mostly works again.

navigate8310|6 months ago

Some developing countries such as India, are completely banning the ply of old vehicles on the road.

msgodel|6 months ago

I'd imagine India has some pretty insane stuff driving around so that's not surprising. The US effectively did that (arguably even more extremely) 15 years ago with the "cash for clunkers" thing.

codingrightnow|6 months ago

In some dystopian future we may have to consent to the DMV to be tracked. They can make whatever rules they want to before they give us permission to use their roads.