Hacking a Bicycle
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I had no idea that even 'non electric" pedal bikes had electronics on them.
At the Usenix Security Symposium earlier this week, researchers from UC San Diego and Northeastern University revealed a technique that would allow anyone with a few hundred dollars of hardware to hack Shimano wireless gear-shifting systems of the kind used by many of the top cycling teams in the world, including in recent events like the Olympics and the Tour de France. Their relatively simple radio attack would allow cheaters or vandals to spoof signals from as far as 30 feet away that trigger a target bike to unexpectedly shift gears or to jam its shifters and lock the bike into the wrong gear.
The researchers' technique exploits the increasingly electronic nature of modern high-end bicycles, which now have digital components like power meters, wireless control of fork suspensions, and wireless shifters. “Modern bicycles are cyber-physical systems,” the researchers note in their Usenix paper. Almost all professional cyclists now use electronic shifters, which respond to digital signals from shifter controls on the bike's handlebars to move a bicycle's chain from gear to gear, generally more reliably than mechanical shifting systems. In recent years, those wired electronic shifters have transitioned again to wireless versions that pair via Bluetooth, such as the popular Di2 wireless shifters sold by the Japanese cycling component firm Shimano, which the researchers focused on.
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@jon-nyc said in Hacking a Bicycle:
Mine’s mechanical. Shimano 105.
Mine too. They still occasionally change gear for no apparent reason, but most likely because they need adjusting rather than because of some nefarious person intend on sabotaging my very important bike ride.
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@jon-nyc said in Hacking a Bicycle:
You could imagine hackers doing this in visible events like the TdF or the GdI
You could really fuck somebody up to a hilarious extent as they're half way up a 25% French alp.
