Entries Tagged "cars"

Page 11 of 19

Shifting Risk Instead of Reducing Risk

Risks of teen driving:

For more than a decade, California and other states have kept their newest teen drivers on a tight leash, restricting the hours when they can get behind the wheel and whom they can bring along as passengers. Public officials were confident that their get-tough policies were saving lives.

Now, though, a nationwide analysis of crash data suggests that the restrictions may have backfired: While the number of fatal crashes among 16- and 17-year-old drivers has fallen, deadly accidents among 18-to-19-year-olds have risen by an almost equal amount. In effect, experts say, the programs that dole out driving privileges in stages, however well-intentioned, have merely shifted the ranks of inexperienced drivers from younger to older teens.

Posted on September 21, 2011 at 6:58 AM • View Comments

U.S. Presidential Limo Defeated by Steep-Grade Parking Ramp

It’s not something I know anything about—actually, it’s not something many people know about—but I’ve posted some links about the security features of the U.S. presidential limousine. So it’s amusing to watch the limo immobilized by a steep grade at the U.S. embassy in Dublin. (You’ll get a glimpse of how thick the car doors are toward the end of the video.)

EDITED TO ADD (6/1): It was a spare; the president was not riding in it at the time.

EDITED TO ADD (6/13): Here’s a video of President Bush’s limo breaking down in Rome.

Posted on May 26, 2011 at 1:57 PM • View Comments

Stealing SIM Cards from Traffic Lights

Johannesburg installed hundreds of networked traffic lights on its streets. The lights use a cellular modem and a SIM card to communicate.

Those lights introduced a security risk I’ll bet no one gave a moment’s thought to: that criminals might steal the SIM cards from the traffic lights and use them to make free phone calls. But that’s exactly what happened.

Aside from the theft of phone service, repairing those traffic lights is far more expensive than those components are worth.

I wrote about this general issue before:

These crimes are particularly expensive to society because the replacement cost is much higher than the thief’s profit. A manhole is worth $5–$10 as scrap, but it costs $500 to replace, including labor. A thief may take $20 worth of copper from a construction site, but do $10,000 in damage in the process. And the increased threat means more money being spent on security to protect those commodities in the first place.

Security can be viewed as a tax on the honest, and these thefts demonstrate that our taxes are going up. And unlike many taxes, we don’t benefit from their collection. The cost to society of retrofitting manhole covers with locks, or replacing them with less re­salable alternatives, is high; but there is no benefit other than reducing theft.

These crimes are a harbinger of the future: evolutionary pressure on our society, if you will. Criminals are often referred to as social parasites, but they are an early warning system of societal changes. Unfettered by laws or moral restrictions, they can be the first to respond to changes that the rest of society will be slower to pick up on. In fact, currently there’s a reprieve. Scrap metal prices are all down from last year—copper is currently $1.62 per pound, and lead is half what Berge got—and thefts are down too.

We’ve designed much of our infrastructure around the assumptions that commodities are cheap and theft is rare. We don’t protect transmission lines, manhole covers, iron fences, or lead flashing on roofs. But if commodity prices really are headed for new higher stable points, society will eventually react and find alternatives for these items—or find ways to protect them. Criminals were the first to point this out, and will continue to exploit the system until it restabilizes.

Posted on January 13, 2011 at 12:54 PM • View Comments

Proprietary Encryption in Car Immobilizers Cracked

This shouldn’t be a surprise:

Karsten Nohl’s assessment of dozens of car makes and models found weaknesses in the way immobilisers are integrated with the rest of the car’s electronics.

The immobiliser unit should be connected securely to the vehicle’s electronic engine control unit, using the car’s internal data network. But these networks often use weaker encryption than the immobiliser itself, making them easier to crack.

What’s more, one manufacturer was even found to use the vehicle ID number as the supposedly secret key for this internal network. The VIN, a unique serial number used to identify individual vehicles, is usually printed on the car. “It doesn’t get any weaker than that,” Nohl says.

Posted on December 23, 2010 at 2:02 PM • View Comments

Camouflaging Test Cars

Interesting:

In an effort to shield their still-secret products from prying eyes, automakers testing prototype models, often in the desert and at other remote locales, have long covered the grilles and headlamps with rubber, vinyl and tape ­ the perfunctory equivalent of masks and hats. Now the old materials are being replaced or supplemented with patterned wrappings applied like wallpaper. Test cars are wearing swirling paisley patterns, harlequin-style diamonds and cubist zigzags.

Posted on November 12, 2010 at 6:28 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.