electric skateboard?
as a species, we're doomed
Beware, skateboarders! Hackers can switch your 'leccy plank into reverse at warp speed
Boosted electric skateboard fans will need to get patching after hackers exposed a flaw that can send them into reverse at maximum power. The hack – demonstrated at DEF CON in Las Vegas this week – was the brainchild of Richo Healey, a security engineer at Stripe, who was using his 'leccy board in Melbourne when he realised he …
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Sunday 9th August 2015 13:58 GMT Little Mouse
Re: electric skateboard?
A *BOOSTED* electric skateboard, no less.
I know I'm getting on a bit, but the whole idea sounds a bit counter-productive. It might save you the bother of actually getting off your arse when you need a bit of a shove on the boring flat bits, but the balance must be all to cock for when it comes to "proper" boarding, shirley?
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Monday 10th August 2015 17:00 GMT Sporkinum
Re: electric skateboard?
Yep. I'm getting on as well (53), but I was intrigued by getting one. I live in a small enough town that I commute by pushing. Takes me about 6 minutes to ride a mile to work, without skitching. It's faster than walking, biking, or taking the car as I don't have to park, or carry the bike out of the basement and lock it up when I get to work. As far as crashing, small rocks and twigs do a fine job of causing that anyway, so you just need to take appropriate caution.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 14:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Oops.
Kudos to the manufacturers for fixing this quickly.
I did have some discussions about e-bikes with crash-by-wire (loose wire even) functionality where a specific fault on a very popular make would cause the bike to go into warp speed (max. acceleration) and override even the molly guard 15mph limit.
Needless to say it didn't get fixed although there is a hard switch on the pack to cut main power in the event something untoward happens.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 15:25 GMT Teiwaz
Electric Skateboard?
With bluetooth?
I imagine the user trying to juggle looking where they are going and peering at a poorly lit mobile phone screen and poking it with a finger while holding it in their other hand. (and probably trying to check their facebook/instagram while they're at it).
Well that sounds safe...Skate
orand Die.In my day, all I could get was a rather narrow thick plastic 'board' in uniform orange, or rollerskates, not 'blades.
And it's 2015, where's the hoverboard promised by back to the future 2 - I feel cheated...
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Sunday 9th August 2015 16:29 GMT John Smith 19
Hmm. cheap tech x short time to market x short range (so what's the danger) =
What can possibly go wrong?
Here's the thing.
When 2 devices are linked by "something" if you can a)Find out what one says to the other and b)Generate an equivalent data stream then either can be spoofed.
Always.
Yes proper product design is hard.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 20:39 GMT Captain DaFt
First rate product control there
"To their surprise, the Bluetooth was broadcasting unencrypted to the controller,"
"The pair contacted Boosted to report the flaw but the company initially refused to believe them, since it was sure that the Bluetooth channel was encrypted."
WTF? The company didn't even know how the product they sold worked?
And just assumed it was encrypted? Mind boggled.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 22:10 GMT Charles Manning
The encryption will only help some of it.
The damn thing can still be jammed by swamping with 2.4G RF.
Depending on how the software works this might mean you can prevent "slow down" commands getting through and thus allow the skateboard to run into traffic etc.
Late last year/earlier this year I worked on the development of some BT Low Entergy/ BT4 product and got to hang out on the discussion boards. It seems far too many products are not being designed properly. People basically just take the demos supplied by the manufacturers and just tweak them slightly. No proper understanding of how the security works, the failure modes, etc.
It's all pretty scary really.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
