<story><title>Apparent hackers behind Kia ransomware attack demand millions in Bitcoin</title><url>https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39309/the-apparent-hackers-behind-kias-ransomware-attack-are-demanding-millions-in-bitcoin</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grawprog</author><text>The whole idea of an internet connected car that constantly &amp;#x27;phones home&amp;#x27; without any easy way to bypass or disable is kind of mind boggling to me.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand why after this people weren&amp;#x27;t in an uproar.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;tesla-battery-irma-upgrade.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;tesla-battery-ir...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Tesla decided generously to temporarily grant residents fleeing a hurricane an upgrade that allowed full usage of their battery.&lt;p&gt;People&amp;#x27;s lives were literally in the hands of an optional, upsold firmware softlock.&lt;p&gt;The fact that it&amp;#x27;s come to that is completely appalling. When the manufacturer of your car has the power to save your life because if they didn&amp;#x27;t they&amp;#x27;d suffer bad publicity is  disgusting.&lt;p&gt;And the fact is, the only reason why hackers are able to gain access to vehicles, the only reason for any of it is because companies have decided cars need to be a service provided by them so they can keep making money after the initial purchase.&lt;p&gt;People buy cars so they can travel freely without relying on others. Making cars reliant on a third party server for something as basic as the ingition goes against the entire premise of owning a car.</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>&lt;i&gt;As we noted previously, it means that many Kia owners may be unable to remotely unlock their vehicles or warm them up during an especially nasty winter storm hitting much of the country this week.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cars had remote unlock and start &lt;i&gt;decades&lt;/i&gt; ago (if not OEM, then aftermarket systems were and still are widely available), with &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; dependence on what appears to be the company&amp;#x27;s servers. The only advantage I can fathom for being able to unlock and start a car over the Internet instead of only by being within radio range seems more oriented towards attackers and other user-hostile scenarios (&amp;quot;your car has now become a subscription, please pay to unlock it&amp;quot;). Have we gone backwards...?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckNorris89</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;People&amp;#x27;s lives were literally in the hands of an optional, upsold firmware softlock&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;People&amp;#x27;s lives are literally in the hands of optional firmware softlock all the time in medical devices that you can find in hospitals. If the hospital doesn&amp;#x27;t pay for x feature or for support technicians to service them, then some people could actually die.&lt;p&gt;Saving lives or not, you can&amp;#x27;t blame a company for not giving you for free features you haven&amp;#x27;t paid for.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apparent hackers behind Kia ransomware attack demand millions in Bitcoin</title><url>https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39309/the-apparent-hackers-behind-kias-ransomware-attack-are-demanding-millions-in-bitcoin</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grawprog</author><text>The whole idea of an internet connected car that constantly &amp;#x27;phones home&amp;#x27; without any easy way to bypass or disable is kind of mind boggling to me.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand why after this people weren&amp;#x27;t in an uproar.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;tesla-battery-irma-upgrade.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;tesla-battery-ir...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Tesla decided generously to temporarily grant residents fleeing a hurricane an upgrade that allowed full usage of their battery.&lt;p&gt;People&amp;#x27;s lives were literally in the hands of an optional, upsold firmware softlock.&lt;p&gt;The fact that it&amp;#x27;s come to that is completely appalling. When the manufacturer of your car has the power to save your life because if they didn&amp;#x27;t they&amp;#x27;d suffer bad publicity is  disgusting.&lt;p&gt;And the fact is, the only reason why hackers are able to gain access to vehicles, the only reason for any of it is because companies have decided cars need to be a service provided by them so they can keep making money after the initial purchase.&lt;p&gt;People buy cars so they can travel freely without relying on others. Making cars reliant on a third party server for something as basic as the ingition goes against the entire premise of owning a car.</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>&lt;i&gt;As we noted previously, it means that many Kia owners may be unable to remotely unlock their vehicles or warm them up during an especially nasty winter storm hitting much of the country this week.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cars had remote unlock and start &lt;i&gt;decades&lt;/i&gt; ago (if not OEM, then aftermarket systems were and still are widely available), with &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; dependence on what appears to be the company&amp;#x27;s servers. The only advantage I can fathom for being able to unlock and start a car over the Internet instead of only by being within radio range seems more oriented towards attackers and other user-hostile scenarios (&amp;quot;your car has now become a subscription, please pay to unlock it&amp;quot;). Have we gone backwards...?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prostoalex</author><text>&amp;gt; allowed full usage of their battery.&lt;p&gt;I thought on the checkout page Tesla was pretty explicit that they were selling a 75 kWh model with discounts thrown in for artificially software-restricted 60 kWh version.&lt;p&gt;If an ICE brand sold two trims of the same vehicle - the cheaper one with the smaller tank or worse fuel economy, is it as appalling and aren&amp;#x27;t they endangering the drivers of the budget version?</text></comment>