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by mille562 3475 days ago
Playing devils advocate:

- If the hack/virus was already installed, a network shutoff won't help much.

- If a car is 10 years old with 10 years of safety updates/patches, resetting to the original firmware might not be a viable solution. But there needs to be a failsafe way of knowing the running software has not been tampered with.
2 comments
jjawssd 3475 days ago
> - If the hack/virus was already installed, a network shutoff won't help much.

Master battery disconnect which auto locks all brakes

> - If a car is 10 years old with 10 years of safety updates/patches, resetting to the original firmware might not be a viable solution. But there needs to be a failsafe way of knowing the running software has not been tampered with.

Plug and play ROM modules?

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niels_olson 3474 days ago
> Master battery disconnect which auto locks all brakes

probably want to separate those. Kill the engine at 80 mph, you can coast to stop. If you lock the brakes at 80 mph, you immediately lose most of your control, and, since you killed the battery, you lost traction control and probably ABS. And you risk blowing the tires.

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jjawssd 3474 days ago
Maybe one day the OS will go rouge and we will have to start pulling out memory modules to save ourselves

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgkyrW2NiwM

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niels_olson 3472 days ago
Interesting. Instead of just an emergency brake, you want a second emergency handle: a mechanical linkage to a circuit-breaker on the mains.
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Diederich 3475 days ago
I concur with your overall points.

Rather than a firmware 'reset', a 'firmware safe mode' control.

This loads a super simple and infrequently updated image that lets the car just be a dumb car, and nothing else.

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iainmerrick 3474 days ago
"Super simple" would be nice, but as I understand it, even "dumb car" software is incredibly huge and complicated. (It's very unclear to me why that needs to be so)
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Someone 3474 days ago
If self-driving cars really take of, "just be a dumb car" won't help in a few decades. The 'driver' may not know how to drive his car, and even if he did, the car may not have a steering wheel.

Also, I guess one would press this 'I want to take control' button in an emergency. That means the persons suddenly finding themselves driving this vehicle have to be above-average drivers.

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