It wasn't Michael Caine who hacked the traffic control systems in The Italian Job, it was Benny Hill!
Traffic light vulns leave doors wide open to Italian Job-style hacks
Hackers may be able to create traffic chaos, just like Michael Caine's loveable rogue in classic Brit film The Italian Job, thanks to an alarming series of flaws discovered in traffic control systems. Cesar Cerrudo, CTO at embedded security experts IOActive Labs, discovered that traffic control systems in cities around the …
-
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 18:02 GMT Mpeler
Thief of Budapest?
Does anyone remember the MacGyver episode "Thief of Budapest" where he cut up some credit cards and stuck them in the traffic light controller, making all the lights red, causing lots of chaos (or more chaos)?
(Also lots of Minis racing...cool chase scenes)...
Paris...not Reena, but she'll have to do...
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 19:32 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Thief of Budapest?
"(Also lots of Minis racing...cool chase scenes)..."
Yes, and many of the chase scenes were actual scenes from The Italian Job. Only the close ups were actually filmed for MacGuyver.
(open source film clips? Irwin Allen was famous for reusing clips from one show in another)
-
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 09:28 GMT Matt 21
That's right.
He liked his women big, if I remember correctly.
Thinking of the Italian job: There's a world cup coming up, we could cause traffic light chaos and make off with the gold to Argentina in a coach. I'm not aware of the Chinese delivering any gold to Brazil around that time but I've heard footballers get paid in lorry loads of cash so we could grab that instead.
We could call it "The Brazilian Job: It's not what you think" and sell the film rights too.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 17:56 GMT Mpeler
Re: That's right.
Ahh, reminds me of this old chestnut....
Donald Rumsfeld finished his daily briefing to George W. Bush by telling him
"Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."
"OH NO!" President Bush exclaims. "That's terrible!"
His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.
Finally, the President Bush looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"
Chopper, erm, just in case.
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 09:19 GMT Michael B.
Hack away you can't do worse than Bristol City Council
Bristol City council can beat any hacker any day at traffic light induced chaos. If there is a straight stretch of road they'll throw up a set of traffic lights with timings setup without consideration for any lights up or down the road to cause the maximum disruption.
One journey a little while ago of around 2 -3 miles I passed through 24 sets of traffic lights and stopped at 22 of them. I guess BCC's bid for the Green Capital of Europe was based around slowing the traffic down to such an extent that moss started to grow on the cars.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 09:28 GMT Anonymous Custard
Re: Hack away you can't do worse than Bristol City Council
Sounds horribly familiar. We've got a few gyratory roundabouts around here (Crawley) which have numerous sets of lights on them. You can always tell when they conk out (roughly once or twice a year on average), as the traffic flow improves markedly and journey times decrease by about 10 minutes going across town.
But do they learn? No, they fix them and normal delayed service is resumed...
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 09:49 GMT NumptyScrub
Re: Hack away you can't do worse than Bristol City Council
You get the same thing everywhere, and if an acquaintance of mine (who works in a local planning department) is to be believed, the lack of synchronisation of lights is intended, rather than accidental. Read into that whatever you wish, but I can't say that it would be particularly surprising if it were a widespread truth; setting a chain of lights up to deliberately catch motorists at each set would let you force motorists to progress down that stretch of road at less than the posted limit. It would also let you massage traffic flow figures in any politically convenient direction, should there be government money available to help ease certain traffic-related problems, that can then be subcontracted to companies run by relatives for a juicy backhander.
Not that councillors have ever been found at the gravy barrel before, of course, but at some point one of them might succumb to the temptation ^^;
This news does lend itself to the somewhat bizarre conclusion that local motorists would be capable of (illegally) making local traffic control hardware more efficient though, and (again illegally) improving local traffic flow and journey times, should they spend some time investigating and redesigning light sequences. What a strange turn of events!
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 19:15 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Hack away you can't do worse than Bristol City Council
A common reason for traffic signals not being synchronized is that the breaks in the traffic flow allow cars from perpendicular streets to get into the or cross the road. When lights are synchronized the traffic never breaks and if you're not already in the flow, it's going to be Christmas before you can.
-
Friday 9th May 2014 03:32 GMT Steven Roper
Another reason for stalling traffic flow
you guys may not have considered is government fuel excise revenue.
Some years ago, a friend of mine worked out how much petrol he used sitting at stop-lights on an average working day, totted up how much that cost, factored in the percentage of fuel excise and multiplied that by the number of cars on the road in our city (Adelaide, Australia - about 1.2 million people.)
It turned out that at the (then) price of around $1.00 per litre of which around 60c is government taxes and excises, using about 3-5 litres per week idling at lights, by 400,000 cars, comes out to $0.60 * (3 to 5) * 400,000 = between $720 K to $1.2 million per week or between $37.44 million and $62.4 million per year in revenue just from traffic stopped at lights. And that's just from a small, relatively trafficable city like Adelaide, back when petrol was only $1 per litre (it's now around $1.80.) I'll leave it to the El Reg readership to imagine what those figures would be like for a major city the size of London...
That kind of money is definitely enough to capture the attention of government beancounters. Which no doubt means that said beancounters have some say in how the stop-lights are sequenced in order to maximise revenue from petrol wastage.
-
-
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 09:48 GMT JimmyPage
Re: Hack away you can't do worse than Bristol City Council
Or Birmingham. Look at the abortion that is the Northfield "bypass" (it's actually quicker to go through than use the bypass). When collared at a local council meeting, a councillor admitted that the traffic light timings could be optimised and allow traffic through much faster. However there were national guidelines that prohibit councils making private travel easier - the mantra is "use public transport".
We need an Alice-in-Wonderland icon ;)
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 12:04 GMT Phil Endecott
Re: Hack away you can't do worse than Bristol City Council
> One journey a little while ago of around 2 -3 miles I passed through
> 24 sets of traffic lights and stopped at 22 of them
Was that journey on foot, by bike, or in a bus?
Or some other means of transport?
Did you notice whether the timings might have been chosen to better suit some other type of road user?
-
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 12:46 GMT VinceH
Re: How true
"I live just a few miles outside Bristol, It's the only place that fills me with dread at the thought of having to drive there."
It's not so bad when you're used to it. I used to cycle a lot - but now the idea of cycling anywhere in Bristol is something that would fill me with dread. And not just because of how
fatunfit I am!
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 09:57 GMT Tanuki
Hmmm
I wonder how long it'll be before someone works out how to display their Twitter timeline onthe big motorway matrix-signs?
Speaking of which, I recall the first appearance of the rear-window-mounted LED message-panels in police-cars a couple of decdes back. Though issued with the messages pre-programmed from 'head office' it wasn't long before the local DTELS guys discovered that these things had essentially no security and the text could be reprogrammed via a 9-pin RS232 cable and a suitably-equipped Psion organiser.
Which led to at least one big white Vauxhall Senator patrolling the motorways where instead of the message panel displaying "STOP POLICE" when activated, it flashed up "HELLO SAILOR".
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 15:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hmmm
I'm waiting to see what the lawyers do when Managed Motorways turn into Mismanaged Motorways - travelling on the M62 a few months ago I went under two consecutive gantries with completely inconsistent instructions. Whether hackers or malicious/incompetent employees can do it, the interesting question is who will pay the insurance companies back when negligent signage causes an accident, not to mention any criminal responsibility.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 10:13 GMT John Tserkezis
Meh.
Lights here in Sydney Australia have been hacked by the goverment for a while. Witnessed a situation just south of Sydney City were one set of lights was stuck on red one way for a half hour straight. People eventually started blowing lights thinking they were clearly faulty.
Then witnessed a series of goverment vehicles and motorcycles (Presumably carrying our ever-important Prime Minister of the day) pass through the green section.
Driectly after that, the lights started magically working again.
As making fun of polititians is a national sport here, they're really not helping when they pull stunts like this.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 10:35 GMT John Smith 19
Traffic lights should be *more* vulnerable as the system benefits from central control.
So in principle most sets would be on a private network with some kind of pre set pattern of delays if they lose contact. Unless budget cuts have got them all on the interwebs.
BTW If the claim that signals are set badly deliberately to slow slow down traffic then the idea is b**lcks as the UK does not have centrally managed public transport and bus operators set their own timetables (which friends tell me bear little resemblance to reality).
IOW All stick, no carrot.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 10:40 GMT Tanuki
Re: Traffic lights should be *more* vulnerable as the system benefits from central control.
In some parts of South Africa, the traffic-lights are remotely managed using embedded cellphone-data terminals: thieves targeted them for the SIM-cards and then ran up large bills !
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/06/joburg_traffic_light_theft/
So long as they only use this to report faults to "head office" it seems OK, but if these things can also be reprogrammed over a 3G data-link it becomes more interesting.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 12:57 GMT Vic
Re: Traffic lights should be *more* vulnerable as the system benefits from central control.
BTW If the claim that signals are set badly deliberately to slow slow down traffic then the idea is b**lcks
As someone who's spent time in and around the Traffic Industry, I can assure you it most certainly is *not* bollocks. Signal and junction design can have many features, and they're not always the ones you think you're getting.
The Bullar Road junction in Southampton was world-famous for many years - engineers could draw it even if they diodn't know which country Southampton is in. It is intended to make it difficult to drive private cars from the (cheaper) East side of the water into the city centre, whilst enabling buses to get through comparatively easily. Then they deregulated the buses and the whole plan went to pot. But at least part of that system has recently been decommissioned.
the UK does not have centrally managed public transport and bus operators set their own timetables
That is true now - but much of the planning was carried out when buses were municipal services prior to privatisation. And then forgotten.
Vic.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 16:55 GMT John Smith 19
Re: Traffic lights should be *more* vulnerable as the system benefits from central control.
"As someone who's spent time in and around the Traffic Industry, I can assure you it most certainly is *not* bollocks. Signal and junction design can have many features, and they're not always the ones you think you're getting."
Ah, I see most reads mis parsed my post.
Yes I can believe that junction signals have been programmed to favor public transport
I thought the idea of doing so is b**lcks now that most bus services are privatized and there is no co ordination between services.
My apologies for my lack of clarity.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 20:16 GMT Martin-73
Re: Traffic lights should be *more* vulnerable as the system benefits from central control.
Vic, as someone who once LIVED in Bullar Road, I am interested in this story. And also the recent re-configuring of the same junction (the filter to turn right from bitterne road into bullar road is now separate from the straight ahead and left turn lanes)
The traffic heading east OUT of the city centre seems to be worse though!
-
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 10:56 GMT IglooDude
But if the 3G datalink is properly secured, then it's still a non-issue. The SIM cards can be provisioned onto a private APN, secured with username/password to get onto the cellular network, and the internet access restricted (inside the upstream network, not at the modem) such that only the head office is whitelisted and all other traffic gets dropped. The thief gets a non-functional SIM for their troubles and doesn't keep stealing more of them, and you don't have a wifi AP sitting out on the road just waiting for someone to take the time needed to crack into it.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 11:13 GMT The Axe
I've hacked a traffic light
Well to be more correct, I've fixed broken temporary traffic lights by switching them off and/or turning them away from the road so drivers understand that the road works aren't under any control and will proceed at their own risk (which they do though the council officials seem to think us plebs have no common sense).
More traffic problems are caused by broken or misconfigured lights than could ever be caused by hackers.
#scaremongering
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 20:39 GMT Don Jefe
Re: I've hacked a traffic light
I've never understood how traffic lights become misconfigured. Most programmable lights have a battery in the ground level service box that keeps the programming in the event of a power outage. Somebody once told me that cars turning on a cross street could screw the lights up if the driver got over into the oncoming lane. But that never struck me as very realistic.
Meh, they probably run Windows.
-
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 12:57 GMT Paratrooping Parrot
Re: Traffic slow?
I have been to London a few times. I hated that traffic light near Victoria Coach station. Once I was waiting for the green man to cross the road. As I was crossing the traffic light, the lights turned green for vehicles. Instead of letting me finish crossing the road, they all charged down the road with me in the middle. A few months later, I heard that a woman had been killed on the same crossing.
-
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 13:21 GMT Tom 13
Seattle, New York, and Washington DC?
Not sure anyone would notice if the lights were hacked in the middle of rush hours. Perhaps the middle of the day, but not
rushparking lot hours. Not sure about NY and Seattle, but here on the beltway, parking lot hours are 6:00 am to 9:30 am and 3:00 pm to 6:30 pm, except Fridays when late hours are 2:30 to 7:30. Don't ask! It just is. -
Thursday 8th May 2014 14:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Deliberate slowing ...
is a fact. Certainly in Brum, where the Selly Oak and Northfield "bypasses" on the A38 are.
All the lights are linked, so it is *possible* to avoid the classic your-light-goes-green just as the pedestrian crossing light 50metres on goes red. However, speaking to one of the council engineers, it transpires they are *deliberately* set so as to work like this. The reason is politcial/ideological. They will not do anything which makes it easier to travel by car.
As alluded to by another poster, it's now quicker to go through Northfield (which to be fair is what most people do) than use the bypass. If you use Google streetview, you'll see exactly what I mean.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 15:56 GMT Mike 16
User-modified traffic controls
Back in th 1970s, my hometown paved an old rail right-of-way to provide extra lanes on the main road out of town. This was nearly pointless, as the next town over had already sold their portion for development, so a choke-point was created. Anyway, in addition to the widening came spiffy new traffic lights. After a few weeks of motorist frustration, the control box for the lights exploded. Many of us thought that this was the work of a Motorist Liberation Front, but it turned out to be that the construction crew had damaged a gas main, and the slow leak had followed the path of least resistance into the box, where a spark from the contactors had ignited it.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 18:33 GMT ecofeco
50,000?
Phfft. There are that many traffic lights alone in the city I live in.
In order to hack them, you still have to actually open the big grey boxes nearby and fiddle with the ancient electromechanical control system. They are close enough to the intersection that it is quite obvious that someone has the box open. Without the proper disguise, you will be busted in minutes.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 20:53 GMT Speltier
Fast Cycle
A bad case is the malefactor fast cycling a light-- the light is green just long enough for the first car to get into the intersection then the light skips yellow to red. And the other light (which is red, and people are slowing for) pops green.
The way most places work, the people slowing for the red now accelerate towards the "idiots" they think are running the light.... and the "idiots" are trying to stop for the fast cycled red, but possibly partway into the intersection.
I see a company headed for huge liability issues from badly designed products ("they work as designed", which means that the lawyers now have the company in a noose-- the company deliberately implemented a bad design.).
Maybe time to get a Russky car video insurance camera.
-
Thursday 8th May 2014 22:22 GMT Oldfogey
I've been thinking...
...and now my brain hurts.
I have been trying to count up the number of sets of lights where I live, and it's not easy because I fear that I may have missed one.
However, in the entire county, as far as I can find, there are a total of 3 sets. If I haven't missed one.
The council are too mean to pay for them, but we seem to manage.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
