Be careful what you think in public….
When two guys interested in computer security get bored, it’s usually a recipe for trouble. Our recipe started cooking back in October of 2009 and the results were something we call the WASP (Wi-Fi Aerial Surveillance Platform). It’s an autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that we built in our garage with onboard war-driving geWhen two guys interested in computer security get bored, it’s usually a recipe for trouble.
In a paper set to be presented at a security conference in Oakland, California, next week, the security researchers say that by connecting to a standard diagnostic computer port included in late-model cars, they were able to do some nasty things, such as turning off the brakes, changing the speedometer reading, blasting hot air or music on the radio, and locking passengers in the car.
It’s fun with autorun.inf, however it’s mildly lame since there is a command window for bit while it’s doing it’s thing. Not super slick hacker cool, but neat trick, i guess.
In the summer of 2007, a team of Stanford graduate students dropped a mouse into a plastic basin. The mouse sniffed the floor curiously. It didn’t seem to care that a fiber-optic cable was threaded through its skull. Nor did it seem to mind that the right half of its motor cortex had been reprogrammed.
One of the students flipped a switch and intense blue light shone through the cable into the mouse’s brain, illuminating it with an eerie glow. Instantly, the mouse began running in counterclockwise circles as though hell-bent on winning a murine Olympics.
Then the light went off, and the mouse stopped. Sniffed. Stood up on its hind legs and looked directly at the students as if to ask, “Why the hell did I just do that?” And the students whooped and cheered like this was the most important thing they’d ever seen.
Because it was the most important thing they’d ever seen. They’d shown that a beam of light could control brain activity with great precision. The mouse didn’t lose its memory, have a seizure, or die. It ran in a circle. Specifically, a counterclockwise circle…
