- Email: [email protected]
Gridlock alert
Technology
For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology
The easy way to build the perfect flying armadillo
pa/AP Photo/Julio Cortez
INSIGHT Infrastructure
–Sometimes it’s easy being green–
Gridlock alert BRANDEN GHENA pulls his car up Cerrudo, a professional hacker and under a traffic light in a city in chief technology officer for IOActive Michigan. He plugs a radio transmitter Labs. Cerrudo found a different into the car’s power adapter, connects vulnerability in US traffic systems it to his laptop and, with a few earlier this year. He showed that it keyboard strokes, takes control of was possible to spoof the sensors every traffic light in town. that feed into the traffic controller, “We were able to advance the light,” making the lights think that cars are Ghena says of the experiment, which waiting at a light when they aren’t, for instance. “[Ghena’s work] and my took place in May. “We could make it research make me scared of driving turn green.” Ghena, an electrical engineer at the in the US,” he says. University of Michigan, and his team “If you were robbing a bank, were exploiting a vulnerability in the you could cause a lot of light’s traffic controller. Present at congestion between you every signalled intersection, the and the police station” controller switches between red, yellow and green lights according to its Part of Ghena and his colleagues’ programming. It can be set to change agreement with the traffic at regular intervals, or based on input department that authorised their from external traffic sensors. study was that they wouldn’t reveal These controllers are often the name of the city concerned, or networked across a city, and receive who made the vulnerable equipment. commands via a sequence of data But Ghena says the vendor in question packets. This allows engineers to has traffic controllers installed at manage them remotely, but anyone 100,000 intersections across the US. with network access can send these The Federal Highway Administration commands. All Ghena had to do was figure out which sequences of packets estimates that there are about 300,000 intersections in the country. corresponded to which controller The US government has recognised commands, and he gained full control. the country has a problem with its “It’s great research,” says Cesar 20 | NewScientist | 9 August 2014
infrastructure – in 2013, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that called for strengthened cybersecurity for critical systems like electricity grids, water utilities and transport networks. An attack can do more than create havoc for its own sake. “If you were robbing a bank, you could cause a lot of congestion between you and the police station,” says Ghena. And thieves or even just an impatient commuter could easily set up a corridor of green lights for themselves. Ghena will present the work at a USENIX workshop on 19 August in San Diego, California. This isn’t the first time that traffic infrastructure has been shown vulnerable to digital attack. In October last year, the signalling systems in the Carmel Tunnels in Haifa, Israel, were taken over, with the attackers gaining control through a weakness in the traffic cameras. The tunnels had to be closed during the morning rush hour, causing massive congestion. “The attack space is growing every day,” says Cerrudo. “In the past you had viruses that affected PCs. In the future we’re going to see malware for everyday objects, because they’re all like small computers.” n
University of Tokyo
Traffic lights can be hacked all over the US, finds Hal Hodson
DO YOUR paper aeroplanes dive limply to the floor the moment they’re launched? If so, software that ensures even the craziest designs can fly could rescue them. Nobuyuki Umetani at the University of Tokyo, Japan, working with computer-aided-design specialist Autodesk, has come up with a program that injects sensible aerodynamic principles into any paper plane idea. Once you have sketched out your plane on the computer, the software analyses and tweaks it so that the plane’s centre of gravity is in the right place. It also optimises the wing and tail surface areas to give the plane adequate lift – even if it is shaped like a comedy armadillo. To develop the physics model at the heart of the program, Umetani and his colleagues did exhaustive tests on multiple plane designs and trained AI software on video of failed and successful flights, working out which wing shapes work best for each type of design. The team will present the work at the annual computer graphics conference, SIGGRAPH, in Vancouver, Canada, next week. The software may have wider applications: Umetani believes there is no reason it can’t be used to design gliders big enough to carry a human pilot. Paul Marks n
For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology
The easy way to build the perfect flying armadillo
pa/AP Photo/Julio Cortez
INSIGHT Infrastructure
–Sometimes it’s easy being green–
Gridlock alert BRANDEN GHENA pulls his car up Cerrudo, a professional hacker and under a traffic light in a city in chief technology officer for IOActive Michigan. He plugs a radio transmitter Labs. Cerrudo found a different into the car’s power adapter, connects vulnerability in US traffic systems it to his laptop and, with a few earlier this year. He showed that it keyboard strokes, takes control of was possible to spoof the sensors every traffic light in town. that feed into the traffic controller, “We were able to advance the light,” making the lights think that cars are Ghena says of the experiment, which waiting at a light when they aren’t, for instance. “[Ghena’s work] and my took place in May. “We could make it research make me scared of driving turn green.” Ghena, an electrical engineer at the in the US,” he says. University of Michigan, and his team “If you were robbing a bank, were exploiting a vulnerability in the you could cause a lot of light’s traffic controller. Present at congestion between you every signalled intersection, the and the police station” controller switches between red, yellow and green lights according to its Part of Ghena and his colleagues’ programming. It can be set to change agreement with the traffic at regular intervals, or based on input department that authorised their from external traffic sensors. study was that they wouldn’t reveal These controllers are often the name of the city concerned, or networked across a city, and receive who made the vulnerable equipment. commands via a sequence of data But Ghena says the vendor in question packets. This allows engineers to has traffic controllers installed at manage them remotely, but anyone 100,000 intersections across the US. with network access can send these The Federal Highway Administration commands. All Ghena had to do was figure out which sequences of packets estimates that there are about 300,000 intersections in the country. corresponded to which controller The US government has recognised commands, and he gained full control. the country has a problem with its “It’s great research,” says Cesar 20 | NewScientist | 9 August 2014
infrastructure – in 2013, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that called for strengthened cybersecurity for critical systems like electricity grids, water utilities and transport networks. An attack can do more than create havoc for its own sake. “If you were robbing a bank, you could cause a lot of congestion between you and the police station,” says Ghena. And thieves or even just an impatient commuter could easily set up a corridor of green lights for themselves. Ghena will present the work at a USENIX workshop on 19 August in San Diego, California. This isn’t the first time that traffic infrastructure has been shown vulnerable to digital attack. In October last year, the signalling systems in the Carmel Tunnels in Haifa, Israel, were taken over, with the attackers gaining control through a weakness in the traffic cameras. The tunnels had to be closed during the morning rush hour, causing massive congestion. “The attack space is growing every day,” says Cerrudo. “In the past you had viruses that affected PCs. In the future we’re going to see malware for everyday objects, because they’re all like small computers.” n
University of Tokyo
Traffic lights can be hacked all over the US, finds Hal Hodson
DO YOUR paper aeroplanes dive limply to the floor the moment they’re launched? If so, software that ensures even the craziest designs can fly could rescue them. Nobuyuki Umetani at the University of Tokyo, Japan, working with computer-aided-design specialist Autodesk, has come up with a program that injects sensible aerodynamic principles into any paper plane idea. Once you have sketched out your plane on the computer, the software analyses and tweaks it so that the plane’s centre of gravity is in the right place. It also optimises the wing and tail surface areas to give the plane adequate lift – even if it is shaped like a comedy armadillo. To develop the physics model at the heart of the program, Umetani and his colleagues did exhaustive tests on multiple plane designs and trained AI software on video of failed and successful flights, working out which wing shapes work best for each type of design. The team will present the work at the annual computer graphics conference, SIGGRAPH, in Vancouver, Canada, next week. The software may have wider applications: Umetani believes there is no reason it can’t be used to design gliders big enough to carry a human pilot. Paul Marks n