[HN Gopher] Tire Pressure Sensor IDs: Why, Where and When (2015)
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Tire Pressure Sensor IDs: Why, Where and When (2015)
Author : walterbell
Score : 23 points
Date : 2025-10-06 11:28 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomorrowstechnician.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomorrowstechnician.com)
| jsharkey wrote:
| A couple years ago I picked up some Autel MX Sensors which
| support "cloning" through their diagnostic tool. Then I cloned my
| summer tire TPMS IDs to be the same TPMS IDs as my winter tires,
| and now I can swap them seasonally in only a few minutes with no
| need to make the car relearn them.
| mystraline wrote:
| Yeah, TPMS and the way its implemented is a BAD idea.
|
| 1. Data is not signed.
|
| So data can be easily spoofed and jam up the real sensor's
| transmissions.
|
| 2. Serial number is not obfuscated or in a reduced serial number
| set.
|
| This allows TPMS trackers to be placed at high vehicle through
| areas and uniquely track cars. Is dying out due to Flock and
| ALPRs.
|
| 3. Some cars, primarily luxury, will force slow you down to
| 15mph, honk horns, and go into limp mode.
|
| Note this is trusting unencrypted, unsigned, cleartext data. This
| is a terrible idea, and you cant turn it off.
| xnx wrote:
| > 3. Some cars, primarily luxury, will force slow you down to
| 15mph, honk horns, and go into limp mode.
|
| I'm surprised some company hasn't sold a "gun" to law
| enforcement that will disable cars remotely this way.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| TPMS data is "questionable" enough already that no OEM is
| using it's sudden disappearance as a key do to anything
| drastic.
|
| I can see them doing it if the data goes from good to bad and
| then the bad persists over a key off cycle though.
| mystraline wrote:
| Its not disappearance.
|
| Look at what happens if you spoof and spam a 0kPa event on
| various cars.
|
| Some show a tpms warning. Some luxury ones do limp mode.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This is no different than the internet, really. "Hey, we made
| this thing to operate in a safe environment." Years later: "Oh,
| crap, what do you mean it needs to be secured?"
| henvic wrote:
| > 3. Some cars, primarily luxury, will force slow you down to
| 15mph, honk horns, and go into limp mode.
|
| Source? I can't find any reference. It looks like you're
| hallucinating.
| hackernewsdhsu wrote:
| TPMS is just another surveillance method. Check your pressure
| like the old days.
| kube-system wrote:
| In the old days people didn't check them and they'd run around
| on underinflated tires on the highway until they had a front
| end blowout and took out a family minivan in the neighboring
| lane.
|
| That's why it's a FMVSS requirement now.
|
| There are secure TPMS implementations, e.g. ABS sensor based
| systems.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've got an RTL-SDR radio listening on 433Mhz near a public
| parking lot and I can definitely see the comings and goings of
| individual cars. While I'm sure ALPRs are taking over any TPMS-
| based surveillance there's definitely a risk there.
|
| Aside: I'll never get another chance to share this, so please
| forgive the "humor".
|
| Once my wife was driving, with me as her passenger when, the
| car's TPMS indicator came on. She was concerned and said "There's
| this 'TPMS' warning light here. What does that mean?".
|
| Without even thinking I said "That probably means something."
| Likely the greatest accidental fitting of words to an initialism
| I've ever made in my life.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > I've got an RTL-SDR radio listening on 433Mhz near a public
| parking lot and I can definitely see the comings and goings of
| individual cars.
|
| For anyone else looking to do the same with it this project is
| great: https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| That's the stuff! I've got it doing MQTT into Home Assistant
| at my house, and CSV into a pipe to a Python script for a
| commercial temperature monitoring and alerting app. The
| commercial app is the one that happens to be near a parking
| lot, but I also periodically get cars showing up on Home
| Assistant too.
|
| rtl_433 has been great. The ability to capture unknown-to-it
| signals and build decoders on the command line is really
| nice. I've got some cheapie driveway motion sensors that I
| built a decoder for. It was exceptionally easy and all the
| config was runtime.
| Thrymr wrote:
| Hmm, now I'm curious if I could add a Home Assistant sensor
| to monitor my own tire pressure.
| lisbbb wrote:
| One perfect example of why cars cost so much more these days. It
| was totally unnecessary, too.
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