Friday, January 11, 2013

Pwn the rifle

MaddMedic points us to the Consumer Electronics Show and what is being billed as "The Hunting Rifle of the Future":
... the PGF isn’t just a rifle; it’s a system of devices designed to work together to make hunting safer and more enjoyable through technology.
It's a $20,000 boltie for guys who are too busy to go to the range and who want technology to make up for their lack of work ethic.
A processor inside the rifle collects environmental data like temperature, barometric pressure, distance to target, the orientation of the barrel and even the Earth’s magnetic fields from sensors built into the networked digital tracking scope on top of the rifle. The user can then choose to input more data like wind direction and speed, then use the digital tracking display inside the scope to find a target and “lock on” by pressing a big red button. The scope will then display a big red dot that automatically compensates for environmental variables like wind, distance and intervening objects to show the user where they need to point the rifle in order to hit their intended target. It will even track the target if it moves by employing digital image processing techniques to determine what object the user is trying to target (elk, deer, a paper cutout, etc.) and updating the targeting reticle as the object moves relative to the rifle.
The punch line?  It's a doozy:
Like pretty much every gadget we’ve seen at CES, there’s also a goofy social networking system built into the PGF. The rifle has a wireless server that streams images and video from the networked tracking scope (which has a 110m telephoto lens and a 14-megapixel image sensor) to mobile devices that connect to the rifle’s wireless network.
When I saw this I said to myself, "Self, what do you bet that there's no security in that wireless server?"  My Self is pretty nasty and suspicious, and thinks that if he reached into the bag of 'sploits you'd pwn that rifle before you could say "Hey Verne, hold mah beer."  Like I said, he's nasty and suspicious.

But the chances that the code is wide open is high.  What would you do if you took over Sund00d's high tech scope?  Change the aim point so that it shoots wide by 10 MOA?  This scenario is filled to overflowing with LULZ.

Admittedly, that's a lot of work to humiliate some rich, lazy would be Great White Hunter.  Hemingway would have just given the d-bag a good old fashioned beat down.

6 comments:

Spike said...

If a military or police force started using these, and they were hacked...

Imagine SWAT trying to take down a hostage taking terrorist. Rather than shooting the terrorist, they take down the hostage.

Not something I want in my gun safe.

A Reader said...

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot indeed. This sounds like someone decided to wrap an Xbox and a hunting game - with cheat codes included - around a rifle. Then slap Facebook on it, because it wasn't stupid enough yet. Having a ballistic computer on your smart phone seems reasonable. Adding a rifle to your ballistic computer, not so much. Unless you're talking about a CROWS system or a Phalanx CIWS.

Guns are already beautiful machines. Why did they have to pile on the kruft like that?

Epic Fail.

Dave H said...

With that bit about "even the Earth's magnetic field" I realized the brain of that thing is a smartphone. With that in there, Facebook comes for free.

goober said...

Learn to shoot. Save your money.

Goober - 436 yards, trotting mule deer, one shot, offhand. October 16th 2012. Ruger m70 mark 2 300 win mag.

It isn't that hard.

Bob said...

*imagines tiny anemometer deploying from top of rifle to determine wind speed*

kx59 said...

linux rules