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Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

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Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#101
post #70

A lot of readers here, and on Reddit seem to be misunderstanding the situation. The way I understand it, this car was taken in by a garage for 'seat installation'. I presume this means after market seats. The car disabled itself during installation. The OP assumed due to an anti-temper device, but it could have been any failure mode. Most modern cars with airbags will have sensors in the seats to disable some of the…

> The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking.

I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what it means. What happens when someone steals the manufacturer's authentication keys, or gets on to the manufacturer's VPN?

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#102
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact that the manufacturer can remote into their cars, does not automatically mean that the car is vulnerable to remote hacking If your car can connect to the internet it's vulnerable to hacking via the internet. My car, which is incapable of connecting to the internet suffers no such potential for abuse.

Just because the car has external connectivity doesn't mean the car has abusable vulnerabilities. Of course, some vendors are going to be better than others when it comes to hardening, pen-testing, and good operational security.

Even if the only allowable connection is the legitimate manufacturer's, the manufacturer itself could be compromised one day (if not already), allowing malicious commands to be sent on the trusted downlink. Or an "oops I found a bug in the code you just pushed to 100,000 cars" could happen accodentally.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#103
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I understand it, this car was taken in by a garage for 'seat installation'. I presume this means after market seats. It was even more basic than that. They were installing a child's carseat for the owner, and I believe it was an anti-theft system that was triggered. The story reminded me a lot of the rental car that bricked itself because it lost cellular service - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/drive…

Who puts a child’s carseat in a Ferrari?

Someone trying to show off their money by driving their Ferrari to the grocery store.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#104
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: I think there is a market for a dirt-simple, stripped down car like the original Jeep. If capitalism is so swift, why is the product I want to buy not on offer? Answer: the market is captured, and controlled via government regulation, by corporations that do not see individual owners wrenching on their cars as advantageous. Follow-up: how do we restore capitalism to our (nominally) free market?

You can frame it as regulatory capture, but to a large extent, it's more about environmental and consumer protections that the auto industry has spent decades fighting. As somebody who drives an ancient car, I'm keenly aware of its lack of safety features. The "american steel" argument falls flat; my car was made before the concept of crumple zones, much less airbags -- driving this boat, I'd be seriously injured or…

Well for small quantity production there are exceptions. Like Pagani and Koenigsegg have a ridiculous high Co2/km brand average because of low quantity. So it's possible.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#105
post #86
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is throttle and steering by wire a safety feature? No. Its objectively worse than having the physical linkage, and manufacturers turn to it out of ease of design.

Sorry, but I'm not sure what part of my comment that you're responding to. Maybe you're rebutting my parent? Because I've never heard of a regulation towards drive-by-wire, so I suspect this particular aspect of automotive design is a result of a free market.

While I could see steer-by-wire driven by lowered production costs (easier to share parts between LHD and RHD models), I could also see it indirectly driven by weight savings to meet fuel economy regulations.

No pinion shaft required. No pinion shaft cutout through the firewall means the body can be made with less steel.

Belt-driven pumps are moving to electric-drive for efficiency, but when you're switching from hydraulic assist to motor-assist, making the whole thing 'by-wire' and motor driven reduces complexity.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#106
This is not bricking. And really has nothing to do with smart devices. I assume this device could be recovered through the usual wired diagnostic port means, so the reception issue is an annoying situation but not anything close to “bricking”

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#107
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I understand it, this car was taken in by a garage for 'seat installation'. I presume this means after market seats. It was even more basic than that. They were installing a child's carseat for the owner, and I believe it was an anti-theft system that was triggered. The story reminded me a lot of the rental car that bricked itself because it lost cellular service - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/drive…

Who puts a child’s carseat in a Ferrari?

Someone who has both a child, and a Ferrari.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The situation in here is more like "haha, ok, we just need to tow this thing out of the garage and try again" - no big deal. No big deal when the reason you can't get a signal is that you're in a parking garage. Rather more of a life-threatening defect when the reason you can't get a signal is that you're driving through an unpopulated desert where there are no cell towers or other people.

I think you'd have to be kind of nuts (or filming a Top Gear episode, not mutually exclusive) to be driving a Ferrari through an unpopulated desert.

Or just driving the Nullarbor or any other number of very large stretches of road, where someone can experience a high performance car, that tend to be remote and have pretty poor signal.

And before you say that's insane... You'll find plenty of video evidence on Youtube and places like it that this happens. In fact, McLaren sent a car themselves.

And yes, the Nullarbor can be very dangerous if you break down, and there are vast swathes of it with no phone signal, because maintaining anything out there is a losing battle.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#109
post #17
post #4

The bricking shows that all these “smart” cars with remote software control are liable to hacking (and potentially deadly accidents). We should have a choice to turn them off selectively. The worst part is that car companies don’t understand software and digital security. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...

Imagine doing that on a busy public highway for a wired.com article ... 'we did it in a safe way' They had no control over the cars behind, anything could have happened. Their attack could have been demonstrated on a parking lot or private road. Their information did need urgently sharing, and while I understand the common need for a bit for drama, this was utterly unsafe & for the good of everyone I hope they've pul…

Just for clarity because this Jeep example comes up quite often when talking about cars:

I don't know any vehicle with connectivity (other than Jeep and maybe Ford?), which does not have safety critical CAN/FlexRay buses segregated from driver facing 'infotainment' systems.

What that means is that the network bus in which your 'compromised' infotainment system is able to operate is completely separate from Engine, ABS, AEB, ESP, Airbags etc.

The solutions vary but there is usually a physical gateway that prevents a passthrough MITM attacks, so you cannot simple send a message frame from your infotainment pretending to be an AEB module requesting emergency braking to your ABS system.

Re: Ferrari is bricked during upgrade due to no mobile reception while underground

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think preventing your car from being stolen is an extremely basic issue - it's a risk that exists at the back of your mind constantly when you drive an expensive vehicle, so yeah, I'm glad the car does this. The situation in here is more like "haha, ok, we just need to tow this thing out of the garage and try again" - no big deal.

I agree with gambiting. Yeah, it sucks, but just tow your car outside and turn it on again. These things exist for a reason. If it had really been stolen, and there was the work around of 'oh, there's no signal so we'll let the car start and drive off' - then a thief could permanently jam that signal, or remove the electronic device responsible for receiving that signal. E.g, it's not perfect but it is secure.

OP updated, towing (which is not easy with an activated e-brake) it outside did not work.

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