Source: www.schneier.com – Author: Bruce Schneier
Not everything needs to be digital and “smart.” License plates, for example:
Josep Rodriguez, a researcher at security firm IOActive, has revealed a technique to “jailbreak” digital license plates sold by Reviver, the leading vendor of those plates in the US with 65,000 plates already sold. By removing a sticker on the back of the plate and attaching a cable to its internal connectors, he’s able to rewrite a Reviver plate’s firmware in a matter of minutes. Then, with that custom firmware installed, the jailbroken license plate can receive commands via Bluetooth from a smartphone app to instantly change its display to show any characters or image.
[…]
Because the vulnerability that allowed him to rewrite the plates’ firmware exists at the hardware level—in Reviver’s chips themselves—Rodriguez says there’s no way for Reviver to patch the issue with a mere software update. Instead, it would have to replace those chips in each display.
The whole point of a license plate is that it can’t be modified. Why in the world would anyone thing that a digital version is a good idea?
Tags: cars, firmware, hacking, vulnerabilities
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Original Post URL: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/12/hacking-digital-license-plates.html
Category & Tags: Uncategorized,cars,firmware,hacking,vulnerabilities – Uncategorized,cars,firmware,hacking,vulnerabilities
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