…We also found that the entire attack can be implemented in a completely blind fashion—without any capacity to listen to the car’s responses. Demonstrating this, we encoded an audio file with the modulated post-authentication exploit payload and loaded that file onto an iPod. By manually dialing our car on an office phone and then playing this “song” into the phone’s microphone, we are able to achieve the same results and compromise the car.

This tidbit, found on page 11 of “Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces” by researchers from the University of California (San Diego) and the University of Washington, says exactly what you think it says: it’s becoming easy for intelligent, dedicated criminals to steal your car — or, worse yet, to control certain functions of the car remotely while you’re driving it.

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Aaron writes:

Hi! I’ll try to be concise.

I have a 2003 A4 manual sedan with 78K. I wanted a wagon but couldn’t find one and was in a hurry for wheels. Well, now I found one: 2003, manual, 107K. It’s at a dealer lot. Plus it’s got some desirable performance modifications, including exhaust. Read More >

Talk about adding (mild) insult to (even milder) injury. Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray was recently fined $555 for causing a single-vehicle crash. The single vehicle was his own. The circumstances are almost too bizarre to be believed — and the jury is still out on what actually happened.

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A fellow auto journalist posted this video of the Chevy Volt dance from the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show on his facebook page. At that point in time, nobody was paying me to write, and I was not yet a “social media influencer”, so I was unable to attend the L.A. show (and I still haven’t). In honor of Bertel’s post detailing General Motors deciding to “match supply and demand” for the Volt, let’s all take another look back at a very memorable marketing initiative.

Chrysler is facing a dilemma straight out of “Sophie’s Choice” – whether or not it should kill the wretched Dodge Avenger to help the marginally better Chrysler 200 thrive. But words straight from the mouth of Dodge boss Reid Bigland made it seem like it’s all but a done deal.

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Ford’s Australia branch is getting $34 million AUD (roughly $35 million U.S. dollars) plus an unspecified contribution from the government of Victoria (an Australian state), to sustain a Ford plant in Melbourne.  Total investment is said to be roughly $105 million USD. Holden, GM’s Australian division, is looking for some government funds too, and its raising questions about the viability of Australia’s domestic car industry.

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The die is cast for Ultramarine and six-speed manual. What did my mortal enemies fellow TTAC hachi-roku-ers pick?

Cities around the country have begun dropping the use of red light cameras,which were once touted as the best way to stop drivers from “blowing through” red lights. Disappointed municipal officials invariably point to the systems’ failure to generate the promised amount of revenue as the reason for the change. To keep from losing more clients, the red light camera industry’s latest move has been to ticket drivers who stop at red lights to boost the number of potential violations.

Several years ago the industry significantly increased its yield by transitioning away from ticketing vehicles for running red lights. Instead, camera focused on right-hand turn lanes so they could mail citations to the owners of vehicles that make slow, rolling right turns on red. In some jurisdictions, right-turn tickets account for 90 percent of all tickets issued — even though national and local data suggest the maneuver is not dangerous. In some cases, however, right-turn tickets failed to be profitable when the public refused to pay citations — as happened in Los Angeles, California — or because of legislative restrictions on right-turn citations — as happened in Florida.

Last April, the city of Denver became the first jurisdiction in Colorado to allow a private company, Affiliated Computer Services, to issue red light camera tickets to stationary vehicles. Issuing tickets to stopped drivers only required a simple software change, but it boosted the city’s profit fourfold.

Newark, California is one of the cities where ninety percent of the $480 tickets issued by Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia go to the owners of vehicles photographed turning right on red. Through December 2011, the change has contributed significantly to the grand total of 41,575 tickets Redflex has been issued, worth $19,956,000.

One of those ticket recipients, who asked not to be identified, drove his Toyota Prius on August 27 at the intersection of Newark Boulevard and Jarvis Avenue. He pulled up to the intersection at a speed of 16 MPH with his turn signal activated. He came to a full stop and waited for several seconds for traffic to clear before proceeding. His front tire crossed the first line of the crosswalk, which Newark and Redflex contend is a serious violation of the law. At 9:42pm, there were no pedestrians visible anywhere near the intersection. Though the Prius driver was outraged at receiving the ticket, he decided to plead guilty before a judge known for reducing turning tickets to $110 rather than risk losing the full $480.

Story courtesy of The Newspaper

Ahead of the Geneva Auto Show, we have our first look at the Opel/Vauxhall Mokka, which is known here as the Buick Encore. The Euro twins get a stop-start system across the board, and two extra engine options. A naturally aspirated 1.6L gasoline engine making 113 horsepower, or a 1.7L diesel making 128 horsepower and 221 lb-ft of torque. Looks better dressed down, no?

BMW will launch a new line of cars dubbed “M Performance Automobiles”, keeping cars like the rumored high-performance diesel X6 away from the sacred M lineup.

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Bucolic Spartanburg, SC, will get a new boost when BMW drops $900 million on the plant to expand its capacity to 350,000 units per year. Spartanburg will become one of the world’s largest BMW plants. The BMW Group already invested USD 750 million in the expansion of the plant for production of the new BMW X3 between 2008 and 2010. Now, the plant is being expanded again to make room for the X4. Read More >

After rocketing up by 32 percent in the year before, the Chinese car market took a break last year. China’s automobile sales eked out a small gain of  2.45 percent to 18.50 million units last year. As the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a press conference this afternoon, this was the slowest growth in 13 years.

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Say what you want about the Volt, the Malibu, or a pair of concepts described by a friend of mine as “ripoff of the ugliest BMW and a 1993 Mitsubishi,” but Chevrolet knows how to satisfy their Corvette customers. In the C6’s final year, the parts bin has been shuffled to create perhaps the most interesting and satisfying Corvette in recent history: the 427 Convertible Collector’s Edition.

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When we heard from Reuters about GM’s possible plan to shift production from its South Korean former Daewoo plants to Europe, we didn’t think that would be highly appreciated in South Korea.  After duly reporting that there could be a deal afoot to mollify the German and European steelworkers union with jobs taken away from South Korea, we opined: Let’s see what the militant South Korean unions have to say about that.”

We did not have to wait long. The unions in South Korea already threaten war, and when they say war, they mean war. Read More >

TTAC may have the most outstanding writers around, but we can’t make the same claim when it comes to photography. Even though the infamous Vodka McBigbra pitched in to take a few shots of the Prius c, in general we didn’t have time or manpower to get the shots we wanted.

Luckily for us, Zerin Dube of SpeedSportLife was there to take his usual meticulously color-corrected set of photographs from the show, and he’s agreed to share them with TTAC readers who have an eye for that sort of thing.

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