Hacking the Smart Gun with magnets

[bignflnut]

For gun control advocates, a "smart" gun that only its owner can fire has promised an elusive ideal: If your phone or PC can remain locked until you prove your identity, why not your lethal weapon?

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At the Defcon hacker conference later this week, a hacker who goes by the pseudonym Plore plans to show off a series of critical vulnerabilities he found in the Armatix IP1, a smart gun whose German manufacturer Armatix has claimed its electronic security measures will "usher in a new era of gun safety." Plore discovered, and demonstrated to WIRED at a remote Colorado firing range, that he could hack the gun with a disturbing variety of techniques, all captured in the video above.

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Plore also developed a technique that doesn't defeat the gun's authentication, but instead hijacks those security mechanisms to render the weapon altogether useless. He built a $20 transmitter device that simply emits radio waves at roughly the same 900 megahertz frequency as the gun and watch, overwhelming their communications. From as far as 10 to 15 feet away, the handheld transmitter can reliably jam the gun no matter how close it is to the owner's watch. (Plore himself prefers to call the technique "electromagnetic compatibility testing" rather than "jamming," since the latter may be illegal under certain Federal Communication Commission regulations.)

An assailant who knew his intended victim carried an Armatix handgun could, then, simply use the transmitter to disarm him or her. But Plore warns that even a nearby cordless phone could trigger the interference. "Imagine your gun won’t fire because somebody’s grandmother is blabbing on a cordless phone," Plore says.

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All of which suggests that Armatix's IP1 is already a lost cause for gun-safety advocates. But Plore reasons that perhaps demonstrating its flaws can show future smart gun manufacturers how not to design safety measures.

[Cruiser]

The one you locked was actually started first! At (Tue Jul 25, 2017 10:11 am) this morning!