Live data from Hacker News

Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

juniperspring.org

51–60 of 105 posts

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#51
The framing of this article sucks.

It is rather cool that you can hack your own car that easily. Framing it like "the evil valet" gives incentive and excuse to the manufacturer to lock down everything. While a real 3 letter agency evil valet will not car anyway. There is an endless list of things that it can do anyway, like put microphone in 100 places, change the electronic, get the key from the manufacturer, add man in the middle devices,...

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#52

I wish other car makers were as reasonable as Honda here. No "evil valet" with half a brain cell would waste time hacking the head unit if they have physical access to the car. They would simply hide a spying device somewhere in the car. Not to mention that people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic/satirical or not. If you are, fine.

But if you’re not - why would someone driving a civic not be a target of an intelligence agency? It’s one of the most common cars about there, so if you want to fade into the background it’s a perfect car. Also, lots of otherwise “normal” people - scientists, engineers, journalists, lawyers - likely drive Honda civics.

A spying device hidden in the car may be found. Something installed directly within the car’s firmware is somewhat less likely to be found.

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#53

I wish other car makers were as reasonable as Honda here. No "evil valet" with half a brain cell would waste time hacking the head unit if they have physical access to the car. They would simply hide a spying device somewhere in the car. Not to mention that people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies.

You think there isn’t some boring scientist or engineer with classified access who doesn’t drive a boring civic to work?

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#54

I’ve heard product managers proudly proclaim their firmware was signed using the corporate internal signing service (good). Of course, the question explicitly being asked (related to internal mandate) was if the firmware was signed — not if the firmware update process actually checked the signature (it certainly did not).

I once came across a similar "solution". The signing algorithm was directly executed from the update package. How would we otherwise be able to update the signature algorithm? Worst part was that it was correct at some point. It was an introduced regression because of a signature change due to " post-quantum safe" signatures now being required by the security team.

By the time post quantum matters for things like firmware packages the thing they've build, even if done well, will have been broken anyway in some other form. But rules are rules, thy must obey and introduce more logical errors and bug in the process.

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#58
post #57

The irony in this is that it's hard to imagine a Civic owner going to a luxury hotel with a valet. Maybe a Type R owner with a stretch...

Downtown hotels often don’t have a choice, even if it’s just a Courtyard Inn etc. I har to park my 23 Civic LX at a hotel in DC before for work trip. It was like $80 a day plus tips but I could reimburse it all. Funny thing is the hotel itself was capped at $250ish.

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#59
It's difficult for car manufacturer theese days. You do proper security with secure boot etc. and the reverse engineering homebrew community complains about no way to install own software. You use the public known test key that everyone can do homebrew stuff when he wants, the reverse engineering homebrew community calls it a security risk.

In my opinion this auther don't know what he wants.

Re: Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

#60
post #57

The irony in this is that it's hard to imagine a Civic owner going to a luxury hotel with a valet. Maybe a Type R owner with a stretch...

I’ve had my civic coupe valeted at hotels and wasn’t doing staying anywhere special. Business trip where I drove the 100 miles to Baltimore and stayed at the hotel my company put me up in. Also, I’ve had medical appointments places where they valeted your car for free.

I feel like having your car valeted was something special when I was a kid, but now it doesn’t really take something special.

Post reply on HN