Tag Archive for Chrysler

| August 6, 2016
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Slam the Door on Hackers

Slam the Door on HackersLast year two white-hat hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, remotely compromised a Jeep Cherokee. The cybersecurity researchers used  existing functionality in the car to take control.  They were able to disable the car’s transmission and brakes, while the vehicle was in reverse, and take over the steering wheel.

Karamba SecurityThe Verge reports the researchers are back and have compromised their Jeep Cherokee, fooling the car into doing dangerous things. Things like turning the steering wheel or activating the parking brake at highway speeds. This year’s attack requires physical access to the car.

Hackers use the diagnostic port

The team used a laptop connected to the OBD II engine diagnostic port to control even more vehicle systems. The Verge says the researchers were able to update the electronic control unit. This allowed them to take control of the steering at any time. They could turn the steering wheel at any speed, activate the parking brake, or adjust the cruise control settings.

Electronic control unit

Most operations in a car have their own designated electronic control unit (ECU) controller. Some ECU’s manage things like a car’s navigation and entertainment systems. Others manage more critical systems like braking and fuel injection.

Radio are a gateway for attackersA connected car’s ECUs all operate on one network, self-contained within the vehicle. Tel Aviv start-up Karamba co-founder David Barzilai, warns. “If hackers gain access to just one of these controllers, they can get to all of them.”

Harden ECU

The Israeli company hopes to sell Carwall Detroit automakers. Carwall is a tool that installs anti-hacking technology into chip-bearing auto parts before they hit the assembly line. Rgis could prevent hackers from crashing your new connected car. Mr. Barzilai told TechCrunch the startup’s technology can head off hackers at the pass. Carwall “hardens” the controllers, or small computers, within a vehicle that are externally connected.

Carwell, a tool that installs anti-hacking technologyKaramba’s Carwall is installed on the controllers, either as a retrofit or before the controllers are built into new cars. The software locks in the factory settings, and prevents any foreign code or banned behaviors from running on them. This essentially blocks a hackers ability to reach into a car’s CAN Bus, and mess with the car’s critical functions.

“If indeed we are successful – if all hacks are blocked – then [you] don’t have to worry,” said Karamba’s Barzilai. “A hack that crashes your software is bad enough. A hack that crashes your car takes it to a whole new level.”

Karamba’s technology is designed to monitor every bit of code that tries to run on the ECUs and to make sure it comes from legitimate sources. “We are the gatekeepers,” Mr. Barzilai told MiTechNews.

Out of stealth mode

monitor every bit of code that tries to runTechCrunch says Karamba has not yet scored a contract with top automotive suppliers that make ECU’s. They are targeting firms like Continental, Robert Bosch, Delphi Automotive, or Panasonic. But it has only just emerged from stealth and begun to shop its security software around.

YL Ventures has invested $2.5 million to fund Karamba’s growth, MiTechNews reported. Compared with the funding that some Silicon Valley security companies pick up, that’s not a huge amount. But it’s enough to move CEO Ami Dotan to Ann Arbor, where he’ll start making sales calls.

Karamba isn’t alone in attacking car security. Symantec (SYMC), the old school antivirus firm is working on auto security within its “internet of things” unit. Symantec recently released a  white paper “Building Comprehensive Security into Cars,” (PDF) detailing the many electronics and sensors that have to be protected.

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Chrysler is doing a small part to reduce connected car hacking. They recently launched a bug bounty program with Bugcrowd that will pay out as much as $1,500 per bug found. On the other hand, Apple is offering a bug bounty of up to $200,000 for bugs that won’t kill you.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Cars | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| July 29, 2013
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Fate of the American Car Industry

Fate of the American Car IndustryNow that everyone is an expert on Detroit. They are focused on what is happening in Motown. Here is an infographic from BizBrain that traces the fate of the Motor City‘s namesake car industry.

Auto industry infographic
Source: The Life and Death (and Life) of the U.S. Auto Industry

What do you think?

  • Will the Detroit three continue to thrive?
  • What will Detroit look like if it emerges from bankruptcy?
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| July 12, 2011
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Put a Hemi in Your Mobile Phone

Put a Hemi in Your Mobile PhoneResearchers at the University of Michigan have found a way to put a hemi into your next mobile phone. While it is not the legendary MOPAR Hemi engine, it is a hemispherical antenna. U of M researchers have figured out how to mass-produce antennas so small that they approach the fundamental minimum size limit for their bandwidth, or data rate, of operation according to the U of M News Service.

University of Michigan logoThe antenna is typically the largest wireless component in mobile devices. Shrinking it could leave more room for other gadgets and features, Anthony Grbic, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science said.

Mr. Grbic and Stephen Forrest, a professor in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Physics, led the development of the hemisphere-shaped antennas, which can be manufactured with innovative imprint processing techniques that are rapid and low-cost. The finished product is 1.8 times the fundamental antenna size limit established in 1948 by L.J. Chu. The dimensions of this limit vary based on an antenna’s bandwidth.

U of M hemispherical antenna“Ever since the Chu limit was established, people have been trying to reach it,” Mr. Grbic said in the article. “Standard printed circuit board antennas don’t come close. Some researchers have approached the limit with manually built antennas, but those are complicated and there’s no efficient way to manufacture them. We’ve found a way to cut the antenna’s size while maximizing its bandwidth, using a process that’s amenable to mass production.”

The researchers’ prototype operates at 1.5 gigahertz, in the frequency range of Wi-Fi devices as well as cordless and mobile phones. The antenna is 70 percent efficient and ten times smaller than conventional antennas, Mr. Grbic said. It has three times the conductivity of similar devices produced by 3-D ink-jet printing techniques, a process that serially writes the antenna geometry.

This new method is a very general process, said Carl Pfeiffer, a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and first author of a paper on the work, “Novel Methods to Analyze and Fabricate Electrically Small Antennas” will be presented at the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation.

“It can be used to fabricate antennas that are of a wide variety of sizes, shapes, frequencies, and designs,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “Basically if you tell me the data rate that is required for a particular application, I can make an antenna that does this while at the same time being as small as possible.”

Internet of ThingsThe prototype was made in the College of Engineering’s Lurie Nanofabrication Facility. The work was funded by the Department of Education’s Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need program, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The researchers believe this development could lead to new generations of wireless consumer electronics and mobile phones that are either smaller or can perform more functions. Beyond consumer electronics, this work could be useful in wireless sensing and military communications. Wireless sensor networks could be used for environmental monitoring or surveillance.

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Like the Chrysler Hemi, these new antennas may supercharge mobile phones. The small size could allow multiple antennas to be built into mobile devices allowing MIMO connections. The small size should also cut down on the power requirements, decreasing the size of the battery required and increasing the time between charges.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 11, 2009
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No Job Growth for 10 Years

The New York Times is reporting that for the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no job growth in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring.

The NYT charts show the job performance from July 1999, through July of this year. For the decade, there was a net gain of 121,000 private-sector jobs, according to the survey of employers conducted each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an economy with 109 million such jobs, that indicated an annual growth rate for the 10 years of 0.01 percent.

According to the NYT, until the current downturn, the long-term annual growth rate for private-sector jobs had not dipped below 1 percent since the early 1960s. Most often, the rate was well above that.

NYT chart

Fortunately for me, the NYT says the field of management and technical consulting leaped at an annual rate of 5 percent. But while designing computers and related equipment was a growth field, building them was a very different story, as the manufacturing shifted largely to Asia. The number of jobs making computer and electronic equipment in the United States fell at an annual rate of 4.4 percent, substantially more than the overall decline in manufacturing jobs, of 3.7 percent.

That was a better showing than that of the automakers, which shed jobs at a rate of 6.7 percent a year. By contrast, auto dealers cut jobs at a much slower rate of 1.3 percent a year, although that rate may accelerate later this year as General Motors and Chrysler dealerships are closed.

The total picture is of an economy that has changed in substantial ways over the decade. After the recession ends, job growth is likely to resume. But there is no indication that the secular trend toward a more service-oriented economy will reverse. and few expect that manufacturing will reverse its long decline as a major employer in the United States.

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Enough said –

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 5, 2009
Comments Off on Tech Layoffs Continue to Mount

Tech Layoffs Continue to Mount

Tech Layoffs Continue to Mount351,202 families’ lives have been disrupted in the tech sector since October 2008, when the banks lead us into the current depression recession economic downturn.  32,820 layoffs have been announced in the tech sector during March 2009.

The tech layoff leaders for March 2009

The March total is the lowest since the depression recession economic downturn started.

  • February 2009 = 48,064
  • January 2009 = 150,014
  • December 2008 = 36,278
  • October 2008 = 50,204

This does not include the chaos the President Obama’s abandonment of the working class, by sending GM and Chrysler into likely bankruptcy. We are seeing the further dismemberment of the middle class as Chrysler has outsourced its IT to India’s  Tata Consultancy Services in “a multi-year contract” worth about $120 million.

Chrysler layoffs

Chrysler’s remaining 2,100 person information technology department, mostly in Auburn Hills, MI will immediately lose 200 salaried technology workers. The balance of the layoffs will come from the ranks of contract workers in that department. They will leave in greater numbers, but Jan Bertsch Chrysler vice president and chief information officer didn’t offer specifics in the Detroit News article.

Some employees may be hired by Tata or Computer Sciences, she said, and some work will be moved entirely off-site. According to the media, Tata will provide support, maintenance, and services that “will encompass a portion of the functional areas within Chrysler, such as Sales and Marketing and Shared Services.”

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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