Discussion
My apologies if this has been discussed before but i dont get on here too often. i have a niggling theory ! if a "ordinary" bloke can hack into the Pentagons national defence system 98 times, whats to stop someone hacking into a F1 teams computor systems and covertly lowering Vettels power or richening the fuel mix on Buttons car ?????? just a thought ?
ps - if i go to Silverstone for next years Grand Prix will i be allowed in witha laptop under my arm ???
ps - if i go to Silverstone for next years Grand Prix will i be allowed in witha laptop under my arm ???
I think two way telemetry is banned so don't think you can actually send messages to the car to change anything if thats what you are thinking.
I'd imagine due to widespread paranoia about cheating and spying, F1 computer networks are probably some of the most secure you can find outside of the military.
I'd imagine due to widespread paranoia about cheating and spying, F1 computer networks are probably some of the most secure you can find outside of the military.
I guess you would need a pit-to-car data comms, which being illegal and knowing the ingenuity of F1 engineers, is probably just not possible in the hardware of the current control ECU, at least while the car is in motion.
There's a brief moment where pit-car comms would be technically possible and that's when the engineers have their laptops connected into the car. These laptops have wifi/bluetooth/etc aerials and perhaps a connection could be made that would get you through to the car if you were on their intranet.
A better strategy might be a kind of social engineeering to get pit-car communications - tap the radio and send the wrong message directly to the driver. Or hack into the pit-lane computers and send conflicting engine data to the team which in turn would prompt them to radio the driver to pull over for example.
I say 'hack' like this could just happen like in the movies but this is definitely not easy.
The big companies/Pentagon type places have dozens of external access points for companies, partners, remote staff etc to all access their systems and this is often where unauthorised access is made. An F1 team might have a few of these to facilitate working between the factory and the track on race weekends but probably not as much as a big company where such access points can get lost or forgotten about.
There's a brief moment where pit-car comms would be technically possible and that's when the engineers have their laptops connected into the car. These laptops have wifi/bluetooth/etc aerials and perhaps a connection could be made that would get you through to the car if you were on their intranet.
A better strategy might be a kind of social engineeering to get pit-car communications - tap the radio and send the wrong message directly to the driver. Or hack into the pit-lane computers and send conflicting engine data to the team which in turn would prompt them to radio the driver to pull over for example.
I say 'hack' like this could just happen like in the movies but this is definitely not easy.
The big companies/Pentagon type places have dozens of external access points for companies, partners, remote staff etc to all access their systems and this is often where unauthorised access is made. An F1 team might have a few of these to facilitate working between the factory and the track on race weekends but probably not as much as a big company where such access points can get lost or forgotten about.
patmahe said:
I'd imagine due to widespread paranoia about cheating and spying, F1 computer networks are probably some of the most secure you can find outside of the military.
You would think so, but they are not. If you plugged in a device into one of their switches trackside, they might pick up an new device in AD has connected and issued an ip address, but as the IT guy trackside is so busy running around that he hasn't got the time monitoring things, and different engineers/management/aero guys turn up out of the blue that you are not going to have a massively locked down network.
And the bottom teams don't have the budget to have elaborate IT systems that the top teams do.
I'm no expert but I imagine piggy backing into a wireless network is (probably) the easy bit and you'd be able to 'see' almost anything... gaining administrator access so you could alter settings would be more difficult (not impossible)
But you'd probably set off the firewall security warning's when you started changing settings and the genuine admin controllers would notice when they no longer had access.
But you'd probably set off the firewall security warning's when you started changing settings and the genuine admin controllers would notice when they no longer had access.
zac510 said:
There's a brief moment where pit-car comms would be technically possible and that's when the engineers have their laptops connected into the car. These laptops have wifi/bluetooth/etc aerials and perhaps a connection could be made that would get you through to the car if you were on their intranet.
I doubt that. If you "hacked" in to their intranet I very much doubt the machine connected to the car would be on that network. Those laptops basically allow the engine to be started/checked. It has no need to be on any network whatsoever.I would also suspect there is security/encryption around the uploading of anything to the ECU on the car.
If you think about it they'd actually have no need to have any technical data/information on a network that is connected to the internet and/or any public network, they don't need to. Physical separation is the best security you can get!
That means if you want access you'll have to do it from the inside. Even that is still a world away from getting anywhere near the onboard system of a car.
Crafty_ said:
I doubt that. If you "hacked" in to their intranet I very much doubt the machine connected to the car would be on that network. Those laptops basically allow the engine to be started/checked. It has no need to be on any network whatsoever.
I would also suspect there is security/encryption around the uploading of anything to the ECU on the car.
If you think about it they'd actually have no need to have any technical data/information on a network that is connected to the internet and/or any public network, they don't need to. Physical separation is the best security you can get!
That means if you want access you'll have to do it from the inside. Even that is still a world away from getting anywhere near the onboard system of a car.
I'm speculating, but I disagree, the laptops that get connected to the car will be sending data back home, I would be surprised if this isn't done via the internet, although it's bound to be encrypted. Your best chance of hacking an F1 car, would be to corrupt the data they send back to base, so that once it's analysed it will be incorrectly acted upon.I would also suspect there is security/encryption around the uploading of anything to the ECU on the car.
If you think about it they'd actually have no need to have any technical data/information on a network that is connected to the internet and/or any public network, they don't need to. Physical separation is the best security you can get!
That means if you want access you'll have to do it from the inside. Even that is still a world away from getting anywhere near the onboard system of a car.
But the laptops are only used to start the car, the box on the car that acquires all the data would be separate from the ECU. That will post data back to a local machine in the back of the garages, which will then send the data locally (i.e. pitwall / engineers) and yeah you're right that'll go over the net (VPN I should imagine). The VPN will be secured, and I reckon the data would be encrypted too.
If you could get in that far, then understand and read the data, then change it and send it back to HQ in real time(its streamed data remember) you'd create some problems - but the engineers are going to know what (roughly) the data should look like so you also need to change the data in a believable way and even then you still wouldn't of changed the data available to local engineers at the track, who are the guys on the ground making decisions.
Nothing is impossible, but provided they are merely competent I think it'd be a tall order and whatever effect you have minimal.
If you could get in that far, then understand and read the data, then change it and send it back to HQ in real time(its streamed data remember) you'd create some problems - but the engineers are going to know what (roughly) the data should look like so you also need to change the data in a believable way and even then you still wouldn't of changed the data available to local engineers at the track, who are the guys on the ground making decisions.
Nothing is impossible, but provided they are merely competent I think it'd be a tall order and whatever effect you have minimal.
Edited by Crafty_ on Monday 17th December 21:52
mattshiz said:
top f1 teams aren't lazy, governments are.
Or more precisely; F1 spares no expense. Governments do.By nature F1 (and sport) is anti-capitalist, doing whatever it takes to be the best and is therefore, not subject to capitalism's inherent failings of aiming to be just "good enough".
This is the reason why Toyota failed - repeatedly trying to run an F1 team like a business, instead of going all out.
smack said:
You would think so, but they are not.
If you plugged in a device into one of their switches trackside, they might pick up an new device in AD has connected and issued an ip address, but as the IT guy trackside is so busy running around that he hasn't got the time monitoring things, and different engineers/management/aero guys turn up out of the blue that you are not going to have a massively locked down network.
And the bottom teams don't have the budget to have elaborate IT systems that the top teams do.
The good old days If you plugged in a device into one of their switches trackside, they might pick up an new device in AD has connected and issued an ip address, but as the IT guy trackside is so busy running around that he hasn't got the time monitoring things, and different engineers/management/aero guys turn up out of the blue that you are not going to have a massively locked down network.
And the bottom teams don't have the budget to have elaborate IT systems that the top teams do.
As organising everything actually at the track might be tricky and risky (getting paddock passes, etc) you could just get in from the factory side with something like this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/27/mission_im...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/27/mission_im...
The car ECU runs a propiatary chipset made by McLaren Electronics and you need the appropriate software to talk to it which can only be licensed from McLaren.
Hence even if you did hack into the factory, you would then have to find your way across the network to the race team, then find the one of only two laptops which are ever connected to the car, change the software settings and force the download into the ECU. Of course this is all during the small window of opportunity because the car is only on the network when the ignition is on while in the garage.
Is it possible in theory, yes if all the planets alligned at just the right moment,however in the real world it would never happen.
Hence even if you did hack into the factory, you would then have to find your way across the network to the race team, then find the one of only two laptops which are ever connected to the car, change the software settings and force the download into the ECU. Of course this is all during the small window of opportunity because the car is only on the network when the ignition is on while in the garage.
Is it possible in theory, yes if all the planets alligned at just the right moment,however in the real world it would never happen.
yellowtr said:
smack said:
You would think so, but they are not.
If you plugged in a device into one of their switches trackside, they might pick up an new device in AD has connected and issued an ip address, but as the IT guy trackside is so busy running around that he hasn't got the time monitoring things, and different engineers/management/aero guys turn up out of the blue that you are not going to have a massively locked down network.
And the bottom teams don't have the budget to have elaborate IT systems that the top teams do.
The good old days If you plugged in a device into one of their switches trackside, they might pick up an new device in AD has connected and issued an ip address, but as the IT guy trackside is so busy running around that he hasn't got the time monitoring things, and different engineers/management/aero guys turn up out of the blue that you are not going to have a massively locked down network.
And the bottom teams don't have the budget to have elaborate IT systems that the top teams do.
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