Thursday, March 18, 2010

What Could Go Wrong? Hacker Disables 100 Vehicles

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.


Ahh, so often we hear the old "well, they'll only use [insert stupid people controlling device here] if you're doing something wrong!!"

Look, any system, whether it's a web cam in your kid's school issued laptop computer, the cell phone in their pocket, or a system such as OnStar being used to wiretap your car, systems such as this can be, and are, abused.

We seem to allow the Government and others to do things to us because technology allows them to. Little thought is given by the sheep as to how those systems might be abused, rather, they bleat about how it will make them safer and then go about their daily business.

The next time you hear about the latest and greatest convenience system, give a thought to how that system might be abused or exploited.

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"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." – Thomas Jefferson