[HN Gopher] Hyundai, Kia to update security on millions of vehic...
___________________________________________________________________
Hyundai, Kia to update security on millions of vehicles after
TikTok challenge
Author : gwill
Score : 127 points
Date : 2023-02-14 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| apnew wrote:
| > Previously, Hyundai was charging owners at least $170 for
| security kits to fix the issue. With installation and labor,
| those costs could soar to $500.
|
| How are corporations getting away this behavior? Are there any
| laws protecting customers in the US?
| brianwawok wrote:
| What regulation did they bypass?
|
| It's mostly just egg on their face and a reason to not buy
| their car in the future.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| I was under the impression that immobilizers had been
| required on all new vehicles for a long time, maybe since
| around 2000? Maybe the requirement didn't define how well
| they have to work.
|
| Edit: It appears Canada started requiring them in 2007 but
| the US has only recently started writing the requirements
| that would align the US with Canada on issues related to
| vehicle theft.
| kube-system wrote:
| As I understand, theft prevention requirements in the US
| require automakers to engrave VIN numbers in certain car
| parts.
|
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/
| p...
|
| And automakers can gain an exemption from this requirement
| by adding an immobilizer.
|
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/09/29/2016-2
| 2...
| ars wrote:
| Do you really need a law?
|
| Tell me something - would you buy a Kia or Hyundai after
| reading this?
|
| You don't need a law, you need journalism.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, we need a law that requires them to _fix the already
| purchased cars_ , which is a situation where "just don't buy
| a Kia" doesn't really work.
| kube-system wrote:
| Why should we retroactively require features on Hyundai/Kia
| cars from 2015? Why not other vehicles that also lack the
| same features?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If news articles are to be believed, 96% of other cars
| from 2015 already came with them standard.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, most did in 2015. Many more cars from a decade prior
| do not. Motorcycles often still do not. I don't know much
| about heavy trucks but I bet many of them also do not.
| All of them are compliant with the law at the time they
| were built.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's a merchantability problem in my eyes. Immobilizers
| were so common on cars by 2015 that it was an expected
| feature. By omitting this feature, Kia knew that the
| likelihood of theft would skyrocket. Vehicles with high
| theft rates are uninsureable and in almost all states,
| cars are required to carry insurance in order to operate
| on the public road.
|
| Thus, Kia knew they were selling a vehicle that might not
| be fit for market.
|
| There are lots of ways that an item could be "legal" to
| sell, but trigger a recall or class action lawsuit. Say
| the gas cap was found to not hold up in an accident and
| cause an explosion: the gas cap could have met all legal
| standards at the time of production, but Kia could be
| forced to recall and fix the issue after the fact.
|
| It would be _easy_ to prove negligence in this instance.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think that's a much more solid argument -- that the
| vehicles are unmerchantable under existing law, rather
| than there being a reason ex post facto require
| immobilizers.
| rtkwe wrote:
| A law would have completely prevented this issue and an
| immobilizer is required in Canada and the EU for going on a
| decade now. A law would function perfectly fine here.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Related; Cars are required to have backup cameras, but
| automatic headlights are a premium feature.
| kube-system wrote:
| The same way that every home builder in the US sells people
| houses with even less security than these cars. Having more
| security is not required by law, and people still buy them. And
| so, the demand is filled.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| To be fair, my house has two big security advantages over a
| car:
|
| 1) The location is relatively fixed, and likely to be a more
| deterministic factor in security than any doors. Cars need to
| have security that works in lots of places.
|
| 2) If someone breaks into my house, odds are it probably
| won't go anywhere.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's worth noting that the most frequently stolen models of
| car all have immobilizers. Part of the reason for this is
| that people just steal the keys... which are often poorly
| secured, i.e. hanging by the door in a poorly secured home.
|
| There is also quite a lot of property and violent crime
| that could have been prevented by better residential
| security.
| dharmab wrote:
| The EU requires immobilizers. The US didn't, probably because
| until Hyundai removed them every car sold had them.
| cute_boi wrote:
| The US gov would probably ban tiktok instead of making proper
| laws to protect the consumers.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Oh wait...
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Half of our political spectrum sees ANY AND ALL government
| regulation as straight HERESY. Clearly the market will punish
| these companies eventually!
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Which honestly seems to be what's happening. Insurance
| companies are effectively providing the necessary regulation.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Too late for the owners of these very flawed vehicles. An
| insurance payout on one that was stolen and totaled is
| probably far less than the cost to replace the vehicle.
| xxpor wrote:
| Surprised they didn't mention the City of Seattle lawsuit:
| https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-sues-kia-and-hyundai-af...
|
| That's probably a bigger issue.
| askvictor wrote:
| I thought immobilisers were not only standard nowadays, but a
| legal requirement in some places. I don't understand why they
| would regress on something so simple.
| kotaKat wrote:
| The best part is this 'fix' is just adding an ignition kill-
| switch routine that requires you unlock with the keyfob to be
| able to start the car, then re-lock afterwards to disable the
| ignition.
|
| Wonder what happens when your keyfob fails at that point - you
| can get in with the mechanical key, but now can't enable the
| ignition because you can't unlock it with the fob to signal the
| software.
|
| (And if they make it so you _can_ unlock and drive with an actual
| mechanical key in the door disabling the system, then it only
| takes 30-60 more seconds for someone with a Lishi pick to pop the
| door open and trigger the unlock themselves.)
| ortusdux wrote:
| Related:
|
| State Farm reportedly excludes 14 Hyundai and Kia models from new
| policies
|
| https://www.autoblog.com/2023/02/09/hyundai-kia-models-state...
|
| Seattle City Attorney Files Lawsuit Against Kia and Hyundai to
| Abate Public Safety Hazard Created by Exponential Rise in Theft
| of Their Vehicles
|
| https://news.seattle.gov/2023/01/25/seattle-city-attorney-fi...
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Always depressing how _any_ metric that is not regularly
| benchmarked will be ignored by manufacturers and noticeable
| degrade in a short timeframe. No matter what consumer's
| reasonable expectations of that metric are.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Yup, cars up here in Seattle are getting stolen left and right
| with that damn usb cord trick.
| can16358p wrote:
| Normally I hate TikTok but this time the challenge did good: auto
| makers should take software and security much more seriously.
| farmaway wrote:
| Milwaukee vlogger's experience hanging out with car-stealing "Kia
| Boys:"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbTrLyqL_nw
|
| Over 10,000 cars were stolen in Milwaukee in 2021. That's one
| stolen auto for every 60 Milwaukee residents, young and old.
|
| South Korea's full of vulnerable Kia and Hyundai vehicles, yet
| doesn't have this problem of teenage serial car thieves. American
| social dysfunction is a big part of the equation that results in
| the numbers above.
| calr wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this video. It's hard to reconcile how these
| kids live and speak about their lives vs my own thinking. It
| seems to be a very nihilistic philosophy.
| tristor wrote:
| It is a very nihilistic philosophy. Unfortunately that
| philosophy is spreading, but it's also had an undercurrent
| there all along. There are a lot of people in the US that
| culturally do not have the same morals or system of ethics as
| the rest of the society, and they act out in ways which would
| appall the average person. This has been able to be mostly
| kept under wraps in the US because these subcultures, while
| shared across cities, on each local level are restricted to a
| small geographical area. With the rise of social media and
| the Internet, it has made the world a smaller place, allowing
| rapid communication between people with shared ideals and
| interests, and this is true for both positive interests and
| negative interests for society.
|
| Car theft isn't even the half of it. Wait until you find out
| about the growth of card skimming in the inner city driven by
| social media. There are /many/ /many/ anti-social behaviors
| that are culturally rewarded within certain subcultures in
| the US. To even get to the point you have such a nihilistic
| world view, you have to have grown up in an environment
| without any serious positive role models, minimal to no hope
| for the future, and no realistic pathway in life to leave
| behind the circumstances you find yourself in. There are
| generations of people who have been bathed in this nihilism,
| and it's created a negative outcome for society on
| generational scale that's spreading.
| flerchin wrote:
| Is that true? I know the European-market cars all have an
| immobilizer due to regulation. I can't find evidence whether
| the South Korean market cars do or do not.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| South Korea is a much smaller country with a national
| healthcare system, strict weapons laws and CCTV everywhere
|
| > Over 10,000 cars were stolen in Milwaukee in 2021
|
| A third of them weren't Kias OR Hyundais
|
| > American social dysfunction
|
| All your stats are about Milwaukee, not America at large
| op00to wrote:
| Perhaps there is no market for stolen cars in South Korea.
| Perhaps South Korea has an immobilizer law like many other
| industrialized nations. Perhaps more cars are parked in secure
| areas in South Korea, and cars in Milwaukee are parked on
| streets or driveways. Perhaps there is more CCTV and other
| surveillance in South Korea that makes it impossible to escape
| with a stolen car.
|
| Not saying it's not a social issue, but there's a lot of other
| factors as well.
| farmaway wrote:
| >Perhaps South Korea has an immobilizer law like many other
| industrialized nations.
|
| Do they? I spent a few minutes searching but couldn't find an
| answer.
| jewayne wrote:
| Here in my city, at least, virtually none of the stolen
| Kias/Hyundais were being sold. They were being stolen by
| middle schoolers for joy rides. Throughout the summer of
| 2022, groups of kids as young as 13 were stealing a different
| car each day, abandoning the ride of the day when it was out
| of gas (or damaged to the point of being inoperable).
|
| It was pure crime of opportunity.
| olliej wrote:
| They weren't stolen because of TikTok, they were stolen because
| there's no mechanical lock on the steering wheel and no
| requirement for the key to be present when running the car.
|
| The "usb cable" for the attack is not anything technical, it's
| purely because a usb plug is approximately the same size as the
| socket used to house the ignition switch/key. You could also just
| use a screwdriver, knife, etc
| Lammy wrote:
| > The thefts are reportedly easy to pull off because many
| 2015-2019 Hyundai and Kia vehicles lack electronic immobilizers
| that prevent thieves from simply breaking in and bypassing the
| ignition.
|
| Consent status: manufactured. Personally I prefer having a
| vehicle that isn't capable of deciding I'm not allowed to drive
| it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immobiliser
|
| > A 2016 study in the Economic Journal finds that the
| immobiliser lowered the overall rate of car theft by about 40%
| between 1995 and 2008.
|
| Getting it stolen renders you "not allowed to drive it" pretty
| effectively, and it's a lot more likely than your immobilizer
| malfunctioning. If you don't drive a Hyundai, Kia, or a 30 year
| old car, chances are your car already has one.
| Lammy wrote:
| Can't wait for the future where the interlock is tied to my
| personal identity instead of to a physical fob so my car can
| refuse to start once I've exceeded my personal quarterly
| energy usage.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| They're half way there with smartphone apps that can be
| linked to your car to allow you to unlock and start it. All
| they need to do is stop issuing keyfobs.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Not much of a joke -- and not something that should be
| downvoted -- considering that Congress has already ordered
| NHTSA to do that very thing with alcohol sensors [1].
|
| 1: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-
| technology/congressional-d...
| erulabs wrote:
| It's being downvoted because it's "old man yells at
| cloud" mixed with paranoia and hyperbole.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Did you read the entry on aclu.org that I linked to? The
| slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but we're not
| dealing with logical entities here.
| op00to wrote:
| You would prefer your vehicle have no keys or locks at all?
| Let's say your house was burgled and only the keys were stolen.
| The vehicle would then decide (because you no longer have a
| key) that you are not allowed to drive it.
| Lammy wrote:
| Correct. That's what titles and insurance are for. I don't
| want my car to be capable of phoning home or of "being
| phoned" to activate some bullshit lockout system.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I kind of doubt you'd be able to get insurance. State Farm
| has stopped insuring vulnerable Kai models in several
| states.
|
| Also, the immobilizers in question don't "phone home", they
| just require a key that's been paired with the car.
| (Granted, if you lose all the keys, it's a pain. You need a
| mechanic with a computer to reset the ECU and pair new
| keys.)
| httpz wrote:
| So you prefer to not put a password on your laptop because you
| prefer having a laptop that isn't capable of deciding you're
| not allowed to use it?
| Lammy wrote:
| Poor comparison since my laptop's authentication is entirely
| self-contained. You are describing something akin to
| Computrace or Absolute which I am also against:
|
| https://www.absolute.com/partners/device-manufacturers/
|
| https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht105220-unintend.
| ..
| kkielhofner wrote:
| From what I know all of this originated in Milwaukee with the
| original "Kia Boyz"[0]. It's been going on there for years - to
| the point where I've seen wedding invitations that explicitly
| state not to bring a Kia/Hyundai to Milwaukee. Additionally, car
| rental companies will not rent Kia/Hyundai anywhere near
| Milwaukee.
|
| As is the case with most car thefts they are an absolute menace
| to the streets. "Drive it like it's stolen" is a very real
| thing[1][2].
|
| Warning - discussion on this topic gets especially racist very
| quickly so as usual ignore the comments. Seriously, don't even
| look.
|
| [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbTrLyqL_nw
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdilXqQaQZU
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VJhLJsBs74
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Car theft for joy riding is a really common reason for kids(!)
| and adolescents to end up "in the system". I don't know how
| many car thefts that activity accounts for, but it's got to be
| a non-trivial amount.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It may be the final straw, but I'm not sure it's the
| proximate cause. A nice boy doesn't wake up one day and
| decide to steal a car for fun - there's a lot of
| indoctrination leading up to that before he even considers
| himself capable of such an act.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Well, sure, it's just a fairly-common act that gets them
| caught.
|
| [EDIT] I do appreciate your distinction between that being
| the thing that gets them caught, and its being the
| "reason", however.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| A lady was killed by a stolen Kia doing 70 mph on a residential
| street a block away from me a few months ago. They did end up
| catching the kids that did it, somehow. I'm sure she's not the
| only death resulting from this.
|
| I hope the shareholders of the Kia/Hyundai Corporation are
| happy about their extra penny per share in dividends (probably
| a penny over 4 years, 2013-2017).
| farmaway wrote:
| [flagged]
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| > Notably, South Korea has millions of the same vulnerable
| vehicles but no car theft epidemic.
|
| I thought the US was the only country that was shipped
| Kias/Hyundais without theft security measures.
|
| > Black men commit a wildly disproportionate fraction of
| violent crime in America. The reasons for this are complex.
| It is politically difficult to discuss.
|
| There it is
| pc86 wrote:
| Have we really gone so far off the deep end as a society
| that following up an objectively true statement with "The
| reasons for this are complex. It is politically difficult
| to discuss." is seen as some sort of racist dog-whistle?
|
| The reasons _are_ complex, and none of them are about
| genetics or racial superiority or any other such nonsense.
| And your flippant dismissal shows just how difficult it is
| to actually discuss things like this.
| farmaway wrote:
| An ugly and uncomfortable truth to be sure, but truth
| nonetheless. I live in Wisconsin near Milwaukee and face
| these issues daily. You can't make this bad situation any
| better by ignoring it.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Sure, but there are plenty of _other_ uncomfortable
| truths too.
|
| White people are _way_ over represented on arrests for
| alcohol-related crimes, whereas Black people are in-line
| with population, for example. [0,1]
|
| Black people are way more likely to be arrested for
| loitering and curfew violations too (I was unaware that's
| even a crime category in the US).
|
| Let's also not ignore that White people over-index on
| sex-crimes.
|
| Adding to that, black people are also _the victim_ of a
| disproportionate amount of crimes [2]
|
| Overall, the point I'm making is the problem with your
| statements is the intellectually lazy _framing._ I agree
| it 's a major problem that black people are arrested for
| violent crimes at a disproportionate rate, but let's look
| at the problem _wholistically,_ otherwise we aren 't
| fulfilling the point of this forum. It is just as
| important of a question to understand _any_ racial
| disparities in data, not just the ones that get people
| riled up online.
|
| [0]https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improve
| d-race... [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-
| the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2]
| https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv20sst.pdf
| farmaway wrote:
| >White people are way over represented on arrests for
| alcohol-related crimes, whereas Black people are in-line
| with population, for example. [0,1]
|
| Yep, especially here in Wisconsin! I rarely drink, and
| find the whole culture around drinking here distasteful.
| I don't see the relation to Kia thefts, though.
|
| >Adding to that, black people are also the victim of a
| disproportionate amount of crimes
|
| Yes, crimes we can't freely discuss because of who
| commits them, another reason why obfuscation of the
| problem is harmful.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >Black men commit a wildly disproportionate fraction of
| violent crime in America.
|
| >I don't see the relation to Kia thefts, though.
|
| I didn't realize car theft is a violent crime [0]
|
| I'd love to hear more about why you think that because I
| thought you had changed the subject to talking about
| crime generally.
|
| [0]https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/crimes/violent-crime
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I mean black people who have have been incarcerated for
| _any_ reason, violent or non-violent, account for about
| 1% of the Black population, so I don 't think it's a lack
| of black people that leaves South Korea's safe?
|
| I'm a black immigrant and seeing commentary like this
| feels a lot like that comic of a man shoving a stick in
| his bike wheel and yelling out someone else's name...
|
| -
|
| But I also don't get how your original comment followed
| the racist comment section: White men commit a wildly
| disproportionate fraction of child sexual abuse in
| America, yet not every conversation about white men
| devolves into them being called names
|
| I think it speaks more to the people making the comments.
|
| Along the lines of how ChatGPT ends up being "racist
| against non-minorities": if you ask a comment section
| "What can whites do better", you'll get softballs like
| "be more mindful of privilege". Ask a comment section
| what black people can do better and you'll get something
| cancerous...
| [deleted]
| dusted wrote:
| "The thefts are reportedly easy to pull off because many
| 2015-2019 Hyundai and Kia vehicles lack electronic immobilizers"
| <-- Being the unfortunate owner of an even older suzuki ignis
| (secondary car, don't judge), who have has a key break and lost
| just the damn immobilizer chip from inside the key.. (meaning I
| had to spend over $100 for a replacement for a security system
| for a car nobody would steal anyway) I'm making a mental note
| that a 2015 Kia is a reasonable next car.
|
| I'd pay a premium for a car with no digital electronics in the
| critical path (meaning I can repeair everything with a bag of
| diodes, resistors and capacitors)
| shortcake27 wrote:
| > ...for a car nobody would steal anyway) I'm making a mental
| note that a 2015 Kia is a reasonable next car.
|
| But people are stealing the Kia's. In bulk. That's the issue
| discussed in the article. This contradicts your own reasoning
| about what people would want to steal.
|
| I'd rather spend $100 on the extremely rare occasion I lose or
| break a key than own a car that's trivial to steal. Each to
| their own though.
| dusted wrote:
| To be honest, I don't even lock my car anyway..
|
| If people are stealing cars in bulk in a society, what that
| society has is not a problem with insufficient locks.
|
| But I get your point.. If I was in a place like that and
| couldn't get out, I'd have no choice but to learn to love the
| security system, even if it is an additional risk of making
| trouble for me.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The headline on the site is a bit misleading. It's not "because
| of viral TikTok challenge", it's because the software and
| physical ignition interface is, in fact, totally broken:
|
| "The thefts are reportedly easy to pull off because many
| 2015-2019 Hyundai and Kia vehicles lack electronic immobilizers
| that prevent thieves from simply breaking in and bypassing the
| ignition. The feature is standard equipment on nearly all
| vehicles from the same period made by other manufacturers."
|
| And from: https://www.hotcars.com/kia-boyz-easily-steal-base-kia-
| hyund...
|
| "Based on research conducted by Donut Media, we see that stealing
| a Hyundai or a Kia model produced between 2011 and 2021 is
| astonishingly simple. Folks at Donut Media started this research
| with a regular screwdriver and a USB cable. They start by
| unscrewing the steering column case and exposing the wires and
| the ignition cylinder. Once they pull out the ignition cylinder,
| they find a twist lever that fits perfectly into the slot of a
| USB-A cable. Once they connect their spare USB Type-A to the
| ignition cylinder male port, they rotate the unit in a clockwise
| motion to find the car starting without a proper car key. "
|
| This is like saying that movies in the 1980s sparked a rash of
| car thefts because they showed people hotwiring cars all the
| time.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Someone is clearly taking advantage of this:
|
| _More than 3,000 cars have been reported stolen in Minneapolis
| this year, including 432 Kias and 368 Hyundais. Officers are
| warning people to do what they can to protect their vehicles
| because this year, an average of 13 cars are stolen each day._
|
| _Prior to this spring, Hondas, Toyotas, Chevys, and Fords were
| the most common cars stolen in Minneapolis. But as word spread
| on social media this year about how easy Kias and Hyundais are
| to steal, they now account for more car thefts._
|
| https://www.fox9.com/news/data-kias-and-hyundais-now-most-st...
| [deleted]
| a_shovel wrote:
| From what I've gathered, "Viral TikTok Challenge" and its
| variations are sleeper-agent activation phrases for news
| editors which make them automatically accept the next story
| pitch you give them.
| kube-system wrote:
| The proliferation of knowledge about how easy it was to do
| this, and the resulting subcultural trend, _is_ the reason they
| are being forced to change it. Otherwise, people would be
| stealing them at the same rates they were before the recent
| trend.
| johncessna wrote:
| > "The thefts are reportedly easy to pull off because many
| 2015-2019 Hyundai and Kia vehicles lack electronic immobilizers
| that prevent thieves from simply breaking in and bypassing the
| ignition. The feature is standard equipment on nearly all
| vehicles from the same period made by other manufacturers."
|
| It's more than that.
|
| It's a combination of a lack of electronic immobilizer and
| putting the mechanical component behind a piece of plastic.
|
| If they really want to save pennies on the immobilizer, they
| can move the mechanical piece further down the steering column
| nimbius wrote:
| if this is what it took to get two large multinational
| automakers to capitulate to basic theft immobilization in their
| vehicles to protect customers, perhaps we should reconsider the
| 'tiktok is objective evil' narrative.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Totally agree. Sounds like they're just using an established,
| more generic narrative to deflect accountability - basically,
| _" It's not our fault, it's the hackers and bad kids on the
| internet."_ We see this all the time for security incidents:
| _" Hackers steal data from BigCorp"_, when the headline
| should read more like, _" BigCorp released a faulty product,
| and now you're suffering."_
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The feature is standard equipment on nearly all vehicles from
| the same period made by other manufacturers.
|
| Even worse, that feature has been pretty common on mainstream
| vehicles since the 90s.
| kube-system wrote:
| Which makes it an excellent opportunity to undercut
| competitors by a hundred bucks.
| owenmarshall wrote:
| I wonder how systemic these kinds of shortcuts are in the
| wider market, not just automotive. How many problems that
| were solved in expensive ways decades ago are lurking
| beneath the surface, waiting to be discovered again because
| the problem - and solution! - are effectively invisible to
| most consumers?
| kube-system wrote:
| Pretty much everything. The practice of engineering is as
| much an exercise in knowing what problems to solve as it
| is a practice in knowing which problems you can get away
| with not solving.
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's interesting to me that there's a similar problem in New
| Zealand with NZ-new and second-hand imports of the same model
| cars: the Toyota Prius C and Toyota Aqua are the same
| vehicle, but Aquas that were imported second-hand from Japan
| don't typically have immobilisers, and are heavily targeted
| for theft.
|
| Given that ex-Japan models of cars are typically higher-spec
| than NZ-new equivalents, it's seems an odd difference; I have
| to wonder if there are differences in car theft rates in
| Japan or South Korea that play into the difference in what is
| a pretty basic piece of equipment in Western markets.
| ggreer wrote:
| South Korea has 5.3 car thefts per 100k people per year.
| Japan has 28.1.
|
| The US has 268.2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_theft#Motor_veh
| i...
| mcguire wrote:
| Back in the '80s and '90s, many computer vendors like Sun and
| IBM shipped their systems with radically broken security
| configs, not to mention holes in their software. Often, the
| only way to get them to fix their problems was to make their
| problems very public. Hence, BUGTRAQ.
|
| https://bugtraq.securityfocus.com/archive
| gwill wrote:
| I could see an argument that the "viral challenge" is forcing
| them to change it. The manufacturers were aware of the problem,
| and doing the absolute minimum to address it. They were giving
| out steering wheel locks and offering to do a software fix for
| anywhere between $170 and $500. The issue spread through the
| "tiktok challenge" and that's forced them to make a move toward
| helping customers.
| [deleted]
| officeplant wrote:
| AFAIK the real kick in their ass to finally get this going is
| insurance companies like State Farm refusing to insure their
| vehicles on a state by state basis.[1]
|
| I own a 2020 Kia Sportage and I just got my offer in the mail
| today to go to Kia and get a free software upgrade right as I
| notice my insurance shooting up $40. Of note I'm in Louisiana
| where they are facing state farms new policy.
|
| [1]https://www.wdsu.com/article/louisiana-state-farm-car-
| insura...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I guess it's more like "companies forced to fix known flaw
| pointed out in viral TikTok trend" or something.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| My best friend is a KIA mechanic. Says they've known about
| this for a long time and simply refused to update it -
| which he said would be super easy to do a recall and have
| them simply put in the engine immobilizer.
|
| I think you're right though. They tried ignoring the
| problem until it popped up on social media and cities have
| see huge increases in thefts for both Kia's and Hyundai's
| ever since.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| That's spot on. But the question for The Verge is, would
| you click on that headline?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Trick question, I would not click on a link to The Verge.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Or is it a paid story, with tiktok struggling to stay in
| the US, and this is a "tiktok good for all" story?
| xoa wrote:
| I mean, yeah? That's actually still an interesting
| phenomenon that combines multiple hot button/trending
| things. I think in this case a more accurate headline is
| actually still plenty clickable. They simply didn't do a
| great job on the wording this time. It happens.
| justeleblanc wrote:
| Is it really that different from the current headline?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The current headline suggests that TikTok is the reason
| for the update. At first I thought this was due to a
| software change in some tiktok app or something. But the
| reason for the change is the flaw, and tiktok users are
| merely calling attention to the existing flaw.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| They went for years without fixing the flaw. Only TikTok
| exposing the flaw widely caused enough outcry to make
| them change.
| autoexec wrote:
| It's like how it often takes public shaming on twitter to
| get a company to act like they should have done in the
| first place. It's not social media that causes the
| problem, it's just that the continuous bad "press" makes
| it inconvenient enough that a company might expend some
| meaningful effort into addressing their issue for a
| change.
|
| I don't think a lot of companies really care about their
| reputation or about public perception. Some of the most
| hated companies on Earth continue to be enormously
| successful and shitty, but with enough attention over a
| long enough period of time and they'll often do something
| to make people shut up about their bad behavior on social
| media so that we'll move on to the next distraction and
| they can go back to being terrible.
| [deleted]
| throw1230 wrote:
| Additionally, this only happens for cars built for the U.S. The
| other countries have electronic immobilizer requirements, so
| they have them.
| katbyte wrote:
| was curious, all new cars in canada required them after 2007!
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/anti-theft-device-now-
| mandato...
|
| but now we're seeing a rash of thefts of keyless fob vehicles
| with a relay attack making me glad my tacoma needs a key
| rtpg wrote:
| I thought keyless fobs all had some sort of counter to
| prevent replay attacks
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Relay, not replay attack. For vehicles that unlock and
| push to start based on the proximity of the key,
| basically all you need to do is use a pair of software
| defined radios to trick the car into thinking that the
| key is there. Hence a relay attack, where one attacker is
| located near the key and the other is located near the
| vehicle, and the two attackers pass the components of the
| challenge/response to the vehicle via the channel between
| the two attackers.
| rtpg wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the detailed explanation
| shortcake27 wrote:
| Ah that makes sense. I briefly combed the article and was
| confused because I had a factory immobiliser in my base model
| 97 Lantra.
| eof wrote:
| I just bought a 23 Kia Telluride (was also looking at
| palisades) to upgrade my 05 outback; I did extensive research,
| and ended up zoning in on Hyundai-Kia specifically because
| their electronics are so 'hackable,' while still containing all
| the cutting edge sensors.
|
| I think it is going to be a tiny sliver of cars that are
| allowed to get away with having a vehicle be able to be
| controlled like a remote control from a completely unencrypted,
| trivially intercepted-and-changed protocol. In the future I
| suspect if manufacturers want to put these features on cars,
| they will have to protect the communication between the
| different systems.
| kens wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that steering wheel locks were required by law
| starting in the 1970s. Does this process bypass the steering
| wheel lock somehow? Or do these cars not have steering wheel
| locks?
| outworlder wrote:
| This is funny because we have a Hyundai Elantra 2010 and that
| one has an immobilizer. You can't turn it on without the
| encoded key.
|
| I guess that at some point Hyundai and Kia decided to save some
| money?
| agilob wrote:
| >I guess that at some point Hyundai and Kia decided to save
| some money?
|
| If this can be fixed with a software update, that's not
| saving money. That's making money by making you pay extra for
| the immobilizer.
| SHAKEDECADE wrote:
| I kept thinking of this scene from the movie Fight Club:
|
| Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere
| traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car
| crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we
| initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A,
| multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the
| average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X.
| If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
|
| Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of
| accidents?
|
| Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
|
| Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
|
| Narrator: A major one.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Totally ignoring all recalls car companies are legally required
| to do, aka those recalls in which the companies have no say in
| whatsoever. It makes for a good dialogue in a movie so.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| That makes fun movie dialog, but I don't think the car company
| decides on their own whether or not to do a safety recall. The
| NHTSA can force them to do a recall for a serious issue if the
| manufacturer doesn't do it voluntarily. The NHTSA usually finds
| out about defects by owners filing directly with the NHTSA, so
| it doesn't take direct cooperation from the manufacturer to
| start an investigation.
| rtkwe wrote:
| In the early stages or sufficiently low levels of B they can.
| The NHTSA doesn't investigate every crash like the FAA does
| for plane crashes.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The NTSB has a much larger role than the FAA in plane crash
| investigations.
| rtkwe wrote:
| True I knew in the moment I wasn't quite right about the
| exact agency. The core point stands though imo, car
| crashes don't receive the same scrutiny airplane crashes
| do in most cases.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It still takes people being injured or dying over many years
| to find out about a flaw that was known to several levels of
| engineering & management during the design phase of a car.
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| The entire movie is a teenaged cringeworthy fever dream.
|
| Either immediately before or after that scene he goes on to
| tell his neighbor that the only reason oxygen masks are on
| airplanes is to keep people calm when they are about to die.
|
| >-Tyler Durden: Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic
| emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you
| become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right
| here. Emergency water landing, 600 miles an hour. Blank
| faces, calm as Hindu cows."
|
| Airline companies don't care if people are "calm" if they are
| going to die. They are not worried about the upset ghosts of
| dead passengers coming to haunt them. And oxygen doesn't turn
| you into a docile cow. I'm a volunteer EMT and if oxygen
| turned people docile that would make my job a hell of a lot
| easier.
|
| The oxygen is there to keep you alive at altitude if there is
| a decompression event. At sea level it does nothing. edit:
| the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level is ~160mmHg and
| airplane passenger masks supply ~122mmHg-- they only exist to
| keep you alive until the pilot can descend.
|
| One of the easiest ways to tell if I'm not going to get along
| with someone is if they unironically quote Fight Club.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| You appear to have understood the movie.
|
| > One of the easiest ways to tell if I'm not going to get
| along with someone is if they unironically quote Fight
| Club.
|
| Yep, lots of people... don't understand the movie.
|
| You'd think when it came to creating a strict cult and
| cutting people's balls off and shit, people'd start to go
| "wait a minute... wasn't this about escaping the media- and
| corporation-driven rat-race for freedom, and, uh,
| masculinity or something? WTF?" and start to get a clue
| that they _maybe_ shouldn 't trust everything this Tyler
| guy says because a lot of it might just be nice-sounding
| bullshit, let alone where it goes from there--but,
| shockingly, no.
|
| On the one hand, if so many people get it wrong, maybe
| that's the movie's fault; but on the other, it's not like
| the movie's _subtle_.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The movie quote is loosely based on a memo that Ford sent to
| the NHTSA to lobby against new safety standards. The so-
| called Pinto Memo has a lot of mythology around it. It wasn't
| specific to the Ford Pinto, but it was used in some of the
| Pinto lawsuits to say "this is the kind of cost-benefit
| analysis that Ford does when designing their fuel systems".
| The Pinto Memo also didn't compare the cost of safety
| improvements against potential lawsuits-it compared them
| against the NHTSA's own figure for the financial value of
| saving a life.
| garduque wrote:
| It looks like Hyundais are starting to get updates, anyway. I'm
| having trouble finding information on Kia updates.
| gwill wrote:
| "Hyundai and Kia forced to update software on millions of
| vehicles because of viral TikTok challenge" is the original
| title. i did my best to preserve it.
|
| one thing that irritates me about this is the keyword "forced".
| This issue started in 2020, with numbers going up to nearly 20
| cars stolen per day. Seems like a very slow and labored response
| to such a terrible problem with their cars.
| kube-system wrote:
| There were 2220 cars stolen per day in 2020. While token bypass
| is a problem, I suspect that the biggest vulnerability is that
| nearly all cars lack MFA. Steal the token and you can steal the
| car.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I can't imagine the hell that borrowing a friend's car will
| be in a world that requires MFA to start the engine.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| I can't imagine a world where thieves get away with their
| crimes so easily neither.
| katbyte wrote:
| here in vancovuer canada the police started a baitcar (and
| bait bike/boat) program that proved very effective at
| discouraging car thefts. This what police should be doing
| instead of going after people selling drugs or giving out
| speeding tickets.
| selectodude wrote:
| Bait cars are racist now.
|
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/police-bait-
| truc...
| kube-system wrote:
| According to wikipedia, BC's program was modeled after a
| program started by Minneapolis police in 1998.
|
| Bait car programs are pretty well known in the US:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_Car_(TV_series)
|
| And police in the recent problem areas have been doing
| this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZh6D9sftw
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