Boosted 'hacked'

Interesting article...hackers can take control of your Boosted board...not sure why they would, but scary nonetheless.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/19/hack_hijacks_boosted_skateboards_kills_hipsters/

interresting article... sorry for spoiling :
The guy on the right said : "The first thing I thought when we started this is launching a bunch of hipsters who are rolling down Market Street" in Melbourne " and "You could realistically use this as a means to target someone, but you could also just hit them with a car,"

..then they both got a job to make impossible what they achieved, ... I don't get it... weeeeeird world

...And why do they say they can hack bluetooth by flooding the 2.4 ghz range with noise? Nice hair. Did someone hack it?

how hackable or capable of interference is the wii nunchuck?

publicity stunt?

So which is it? Bluetooth or 2.4 ghz? The article is flawed as far as facts are concerned.

Hopefully this will not transform itself into legislation banning the use of wireless transmitters on e-vehicles for safety reasons...
or (equally devastating) costly transmission/reception permit protocols to be complied by the (mostly kickstartered) tiny companies making e-vehicles.

Lets see how it plays out...

also. buy a comb guy....

psychotiller said:

So which is it? Bluetooth or 2.4 ghz?

Click to expand...

I can't access the article (blank page, old browser) but AFAICR, BT uses a 2.4ghz-area signal, just like many forms of license-free wireless connections.


Regarding hacking (or even just jamming) a wireless vehicle control connection, this is something I brought up some time ago as a potential issue, though I forget what vehicle it was about. :/

There's a few things you can do to make a hack tougher, such as encoding the signal in the hardware prior to transmission, decoding it at the other end, with a long key that you can program in when setting up whatever other programmable parameters the vehicle has. If the MPUs used are fast enough, it shouldnt' affect the operation of the device, and would be transparent to the user. A dedicated MPU could be used just for the encode/decode if necessary.


Jamming, on the other hand, you can't directly protect against. If the signal can't get thru, or is unintelligible because of interference from whatever source, the controller just needs a "graceful" shutdown sequence that does the least harm to the vehicle and user.

Especially on a board there's probably no way to guarantee *no* harm, because if one is accelerating on the board to get out of the way of something, or is actively braking (regen/etc), or whatever, and the shutdown turns off the system to let you coast to a stop, you may well either not get out of the way or stop in time.

But if the board is setup to simply continue whatever it's last command was if it loses comm with the wireless controller, then you could have a much worse problem if the signal is deliberately jammed. Hopefully none of them are designed that way.


Anyway, those are just a couple of thoughts. I think I had more in my old post about it, wherever that is at.

I remember listening to an IT security podcast (risky business) not long ago that basically was saying there isn't much in any version of bluetooth that hasn't been hacked.

I sometimes when in the car listen to the Risky Business podcasts as they go through the weekly news of all the security threats out there. If you don't know much about this stuff then this is a good easy way to get a taste of how vulnerable we all are (like the Sony hack) etc, its likely to blow your head off in fear.
http://risky.biz/feeds

That bluetooth hack was presented at https://www.kiwicon.org/ security conference in new zealand, the main guy that always runs through the weekly security news on the risky business podcast hosted the kiwicon I think.

I would say the eboards would just shut down in case of a jam. A hijack means its taking direct control. Realistically you would have to be a jerk to do this to some one deliberately. The guys that did this are just geeks that love hacking, lots of them out there these days.

You got considerably more chance of just some thug punching you in the head from behind or the side who is just jealous of seeing some one having fun on an eboard then you do of being a victim of a bluetooth hijack. If you think there is a professional hitman out for you then maybe your in that 0.001% category to be paranoid about this issue.

Look at the tools out the for even hacking bluetooth on windows.. http://hackyogi.com/top-5-bluetooth-hacking-tools/
These guys would of used linux tools which are usually more powerful, and just written a script to crack your signal in a few seconds and rip into it with unwanted commands..

How likely is interference to happen as apposed to a saboteur? Anything around we should avoid riding near with the wii nunchuck?

Hummina Shadeeba said:

Anything around we should avoid riding near with the wii nunchuck?

Click to expand...

I'd avoid Market street Melbourne....
the rest of the planet should be fairly safe..

Id say we spend more time worrying about perhaps more inminent dangers...
...the amount of eboarders/escooters that ride without helmets..
...or waiting till our transmitter stops transmitting before changing the batteries... (guilty of that myself)
... or even lipo fires which acording to Youtube are fairly common

Guys,

I don't know much about security of the Bluetooth 4.0 that Boosted is using but I recently purchased the dual plus just to see how it is. After 15 minutes of riding it I decided to send it back. While riding at 20 mph I lost connection with the board several time (heavy traffic) plus starting from stand still the board would not sink or move. Range only got @4 miles.

Silenthunter said:

Guys,

I don't know much about security of the Bluetooth 4.0 that Boosted is using but I recently purchased the dual plus just to see how it is. After 15 minutes of riding it I decided to send it back. While riding at 20 mph I lost connection with the board several time (heavy traffic) plus starting from stand still the board would not sink or move. Range only got @4 miles.

Click to expand...

Ouch.. it's like apple. Everyone still likes it even though it's not all that great lol. Aesthetics is nice.. more of a fashion statement.