Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets

Digital licence plates, already legal to bargain successful a increasing fig of states and to thrust with nationwide, connection a fewer perks implicit their expanse metallic predecessors. You tin alteration their show connected the alert to framework your sheet fig with novelty messages, for instance, oregon to emblem that your car has been stolen. Now 1 information researcher has shown however they tin besides beryllium hacked to alteration a little benign feature: changing a car's licence sheet fig astatine volition to debar postulation tickets and tolls—or adjacent pin them connected idiosyncratic else.

Josep Rodriguez, a researcher astatine information steadfast IOActive, has revealed a method to “jailbreak” integer licence plates sold by Reviver, the starring vendor of those plates successful the US. By removing a sticker connected the backmost of the sheet and attaching a cablegram to its interior connectors, he's capable to rewrite a Reviver plate's firmware successful a substance of minutes. Then, with that customized firmware installed, the jailbroken licence sheet tin person commands via Bluetooth from a smartphone app to instantly alteration its show to amusement immoderate characters oregon image.

That susceptibility to jailbreaking, Rodriguez points out, could fto drivers with the licence plates evade immoderate strategy that depends connected licence sheet numbers for enforcement oregon surveillance, from tolls to speeding and parking tickets to automatic licence sheet readers that constabulary usage to way transgression suspects. “You tin enactment immoderate you privation connected the screen, which users are not expected to beryllium capable to do,” says Rodriguez. “Imagine you are going done a velocity camera oregon if you are a transgression and you don't privation to get caught."

Worse still, Rodriguez points retired that a jailbroken licence sheet tin beryllium changed not conscionable to an arbitrary fig but besides to the fig of different vehicle—whose operator would past person the malicious user's tickets and toll bills. “If you tin alteration the licence sheet fig whenever you want, you tin origin immoderate existent problems,” Rodriguez says.

All traffic-related mischief aside, Rodriguez besides notes that jailbreaking the plates could besides let drivers to usage the plates' features, including its built-in GPS tracking, without paying Reviver's $29.99 monthly subscription fee.

Because the vulnerability that allowed him to rewrite the plates' firmware exists astatine the hardware level—in Reviver's chips themselves—Rodriguez says there's nary mode for Reviver to spot the contented with a specified bundle update. Instead, it would person to regenerate those chips successful each display. That means the company's licence plates are precise apt to stay susceptible contempt Rodriguez's warning—a fact, Rodriguez says, that transport policymakers and instrumentality enforcement should beryllium alert of arsenic integer licence plates rotation retired crossed the country. “It's a large occupation due to the fact that present you person thousands of licensed plates with this issue, and you would request to alteration the hardware to hole it,” helium says.