Met Police urges drivers to slow down after catching driver doing 110mph in a 30mph zone

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Unfortunately that involves retro-fitting systems to existing vehicles and ensuring that people don't bypass the restrictions when they are enabled.

What really prevents people from mis-behaving is the expectation (or not) that they'll get caught, so I think we should focus more on using speed cameras and introduce increasing fines for repeat offenders (say, double the fine each time you're caught in a rolling 5 year period). It could literally pay for itself.

How many average Jo's would know how to hack their engine management computer? Far far less than those who will speed in areas where there are no police or speed cameras. As for retro fitting - easy make it a requirement of MOT and or insurance.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Unfortunately that involves retro-fitting systems to existing vehicles and ensuring that people don't bypass the restrictions when they are enabled.

What really prevents people from mis-behaving is the expectation (or not) that they'll get caught, so I think we should focus more on using speed cameras and introduce increasing fines for repeat offenders (say, double the fine each time you're caught in a rolling 5 year period). It could literally pay for itself.

It's trivial to prevent the restrictions from being bypassed by encrypting whatever module they're using on the car's computer to limit the speed in the first place. The only reason this isn't already done 'properly' is because car manufacturers are lazy and cheap and don't want to expend the energy or money in doing it

If the engine management is encrypted then how does it work without also having a means to decrypt it? It sounds to me like the efforts to encrypt DVDs back in the day. It's not a trivial solution.

hawkinspeter wrote:

If the engine management is encrypted then how does it work without also having a means to decrypt it? It sounds to me like the efforts to encrypt DVDs back in the day. It's not a trivial solution.

It's entirely trivial. Every modern laptop and most desktops is fitted with a TPM chip which is used to encrypt data on the hard drive at rest (to prevent people from nicking the drive out the machine and re-mounting it somewhere else to access the data from another device). It's how all corporate disk encryption (and private disk encryption, if you care enough to do it) works. The TPM module has part of the encryption key, so the key itself can't be retrieved from the data on the disk. In order to read/write to the disk you need to either be authorised (ie: logged onto the device with an approved account) or decrypt the disk entirely using the key (requiring you to have either the device already mounted and enter a passphrase, or the 'recovery key' - which is generated at the time the disk is encrypted and stored elsewhere)

The technology to do this has been around for more than ten years

It isn't completely flawless - you could, for instance, hack the system where the recovery keys are stored and potentially have access to all encryption keys for all cars made by the manufacturer (would be trivial for anyone to protect against this, but it costs money to do that and this is the car industry we're talking about so...) - but it absoluteky is easy to implement

The problem with this is that car manufacturers (and I speak from painful and current experience) are not remotely interested in anything that affects their bottom line when it comes to technology and security. Unless it is government mandated, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of them doing this

I think you're missing the point - to use a laptop (or start the car engine) you need to unlock the key. Encrypted data at rest would be equivalent to encrypted engine management with the car parked. To start the engine, it would have to possess the key to unlock it.

No... Perhaps I'm not explaining myself properly. I'm not talking about encrypting the entire system. I'm talking about encrypting a small part of it - the part that controls the instruction set about limiting engine speed - and making that part tamper proof. That way, it's still possible for the ECU to be programmed, for the car to be started, to be driven, to be upgraded etc. The instructions related to the limiter aren't by passable because that part of the instruction set isn't writable at run-time, only readable - and can't be reprogrammed without the encryption keys

I see - more like a signed piece of code, probably similar to UEFI secure boot.

There's still plenty of by-passes available as the main problem is that the car and engine is in possession of the person trying to by-pass it. There's also the issue that car mechanics would most likely need to update/re-program the engine management system and if they have privileged access to the hardware then that opens up some more vulnerabilities. It might be possible to get it all working flawlessly but it's not an easy thing to get right.

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

All our works vehicles have GPS trackers and we have individual fobs which must be used to silence a loud buzzer. You couldn't drive with it buzzing for long. It's not accurate enough to to prosecute, but it does show up the bad drivers. It's not infallible, as one of our vans tracker doesn't need the key fob to drive it, so the driver using this van can't be identified. But it's a step in the right direction.
These trackers were all retrofitted, so could be installed at MOT time

Unfortunately no government will have the will power to introduce anything like this.

So in the meantime CRUSH the feckin cars

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Except numerical differentiation of GPS is a dismal way to get reliable, near-instantaneous speed? Useful perhaps over distance to check the calibration of the actual speedometer, but not much else.

werics wrote:

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Except numerical differentiation of GPS is a dismal way to get reliable, near-instantaneous speed? Useful perhaps over distance to check the calibration of the actual speedometer, but not much else.

You misunderstand - the GPS tells the engine management computer what the speed limit is in that specific location and the EMC limits the speed using its own sensors i.e. the speedometer.

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Our car dates back to 2004, dont think it has any "modern technology" in it.

I'll up you on that. Ours was registered in 2002. You have to crank it to start it. 

Lukas wrote:

I'll up you on that. Ours was registered in 2002. You have to crank it to start it. 

Mine was first registered in November 1970 (and my wife's in the middle of 1973).

<mic drop>

alchemilla wrote:

Dropped wrote:

There is one clear cut way of ending speeding and the technology is already installed in most cars. It is called GPS and the engine management computer. Link the 2 with an algorithum, that a GCSE student could write, and the car simply wll not exceed the posted speed limit. Considering what VW managed with with their emissions fiddling software I think that would be a piece of piss, but admittedly political suicide for any politician to campaign for.

Our car dates back to 2004, dont think it has any "modern technology" in it.

The first EMCU was produced by Motorola in 1980 so you will find even your car has a engine management computer.