Interesting technology, and in this case everything worked out nicely. But since it relies on the internet, I’m wondering if it might be vulnerable to a variation of SWATing.
It didn’t work out nicely for her. I wonder how many people would try to disable that stuff if they were aware that their car could do such a thing.
You.Have.One.Point.Remaining.On.Your.License.
Fifth Element, anyone?
Ford’s Sync system is subscription-based. If you don’t subscribe, I wonder if that also disables the automatic 911-dialing system.
Some/All of their new cars that are Sync-capable come with a free trial subscription; I suppose your only recourse during that trial period would be to deliberately disable the system.
Oh, why did I register with Insta-Trace?!
I was thinking more along the lines of Robocop…“You have 30 seconds to park your now illegally driven vehicle…20…10…0…BLAM”…
That is awesome. Bitch got what was coming to her. I wish that happened more often in real life.
No it isn’t. SYNC Services are, but those are (IMO) only marginally useful; SYNC itself is all self-contained.
https://owner.ford.com/tools/account/how-tos/sync-services.html
911 Assist doesn’t use SYNC Services. all it does is dial 911 via a paired cell phone if the Restraints Control Module (RCM) reports that it ordered airbag deployment.
You can manually set 911 Assist off from the settings menu in SYNC.
It may just be the march of technology, but Cathy Bernstein is about to take an unscheduled drive into . . . the Twilight Zone!
You Drive, January 3, 1964
Maybe they can split it into two different services, SYNC and SNYCH.
I wonder if this incident will dampen the spirits of all the techno-freaks who simply can’t wait to get in a car completely controlled by “The Cloud” ®.
Volunteering to become the first on their blocks to be BORG.
Luckily, I will have a great excuse for not joining that party: I’ll be Dead!.
In my Honda it doesn’t rely on the internet. If it sense an accident (I assume it goes by the airbags going off, but there could be other things), it uses your bluetooth linked phone to call 911 and relays info to them that way.
I have the option to turn that specific feature off (and still use bluetooth), but I really couldn’t think of any reason why I’d want too.
I bet the driver in the OP can think of one.
I for one would seek to disable it, not because I’d like to run into people and disappear though. I’m afraid that any system that can access the internet can be accessed by the internet. What’s stopping a hacker from sending “full speed ahead” or “engine off” signals to everyone’s car on the freeway at rush hour?
I used to use an interrupt that turned off the electric fuel pump and rendered the car inoperative as a “cheap” anti theft device. I’d switch a hidden switch and the fuel pump would not activate if someone tried to start the car. Now I see that the car will notify the police every time the fuel pump is switched off (as automatically happens in a roll over type accident). This actually might end up being funny if it wasn’t a waste of police time responding to my “anti theft device.”
in most cases that can’t happen; at least with current versions of SYNC the 911 assist uses a Bluetooth-paired phone to make the call. There is literally no way to make the phone send data/commands over bluetooth which SYNC would then somehow convert to CAN messages to control the car. Now, the big fuckup Chrysler had with UConnect was via its embedded modem, and some really bush league mistakes in the code/architecture (meaning, open TCP ports.) I can assure you that UConnect exploit was an “oh shit!” moment for the entire industry.
that wouldn’t trigger it. Ford vehicles used to have an “inertia switch” which would cut off power to the fuel pump in a collision. On modern ones, the restraints control module (RCM) issues the command to the PCM to disable the fuel pump in the event of a severe enough collision. the 911 Assist feature would only place an emergency call if the fuel pump cutoff was commanded by the RCM. You turning it off via a switch wouldn’t do it.
A billion things, including the fact that the software wouldn’t have that capability.
SYNC, no. Software like UConnect, not so much
it’s different because that version of UConnect has an embedded cellular modem, and an attacker would need to know certain things before even being able to “find” the car on the internet, but there were some real rookie mistakes in there which enabled it. Honestly, while I see the appeal in “gee whiz” features like being able to see diagnostic/performance data from the center stack display, the problem with it is that CAN was never, ever, ever meant to be world-facing. It’s great at the job it was designed for; a robust, fault-tolerant, real-time communications bus between modules on a closed network. But what that UConnect system did was build a bridge from that network to the outside world, and forgot to put a guard at the bridge.
Until then, your username is perhaps a bit premature.
Only if she bought the car with plan of running people down (or at least knowing in advance that if she got into an accident, she’d take off if were a viable option).