Israeli companies have developed and are selling advanced cyber tools that can hack into the tech of your car and use it to collect intelligence on you.
Three years ago, Haaretz revealed the existence of the offensive cyber intelligence company Toka, which was co-founded by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and a former Israel Defense Forces cyber chief, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Yaron Rosen. The firm specialized in hacking into security cameras, but as documents obtained by Haaretz at the time revealed, Toka also had a product called CARINT that fused camera data with data linked to cars.
At the time, the industry was in its infancy. But industry sources say that Toka has since expanded its offering on cars. It has developed and even sold a product capable of hacking into a specific vehicle’s multimedia systems, pinpointing its location and tracking its movements; that is, a specific model by a specific manufacturer. The technology can even remotely access the microphone of the vehicle’s hands-free system, allowing eavesdropping on the driver, and even tap into cameras installed on the dashboard or around the car.
We have eCall in the EU so that lads from Brussels can spy on us in our cars.
Can we disable these cameras and microphones at least? I can’t imagine people would have stood for this level of surveillance and control a few generations back. Something is fundamentally wrong with us, I seriously think some systematic pollutant is making us more docile and trusting. Not just taxoplasmosis which could infect up to 30% of the population and does inhibit the fear center, spread between cats and rodents the rodents that get it lose their fear of cats. But all mammals can get it. Spread through feces.
I just disabled my vehicles modem.
Are we sure that is the only way for it to communicate with the internets/phones, rf receivers, etc?
Just ran a quick search and some manufacturers will brick the vehicle if you do it.
I think it was all being done covertly and obfuscated within bajillions of pages of constant terms of service and privacy policies that nobody has time to read. By the time everyone figured it out, they were addicted to the convenience of the tech and then when the Overton window was shifted it just got worse.
The number of people who do not understand that individuals don’t need to sit and watch each camera feed for the surveillance to be dangerous is alarming. People dont understand pattern recognition algos, data science, or that everything is stored for later use.