Think Microsoft is bad?

[Nightshade]

Try John Deere:

Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware

To avoid the draconian locks that John Deere puts on the tractors they buy, farmers throughout America's heartland have started hacking their equipment with firmware that's cracked in Eastern Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums.

Tractor hacking is growing increasingly popular because John Deere and other manufacturers have made it impossible to perform "unauthorized" repair on farm equipment, which farmers see as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time.

"When crunch time comes and we break down, chances are we don't have time to wait for a dealership employee to show up and fix it," Danny Kluthe, a hog farmer in Nebraska, told his state legislature earlier this month. "Most all the new equipment [requires] a download [to fix]."

The nightmare scenario, and a fear I heard expressed over and over again in talking with farmers, is that John Deere could remotely shut down a tractor and there wouldn't be anything a farmer could do about it.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... n-firmware

In case you're interested:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... lectronics

I imagine the same thing could be done by auto manufacturers if they so wanted to.

Ford not want you to drive your Taurus anymore? They could flick a switch at their headquarters. Scary business, literally.

[callmeslick]

no one wants you to drive a Taurus.

Read the article, and this might be part of why JD equipment is losing out to other manufacturers.

[Tunnelcat]

You obviously don't repair your own vehicles slick, or you'd see what's going on. I've done the repairs on nearly ALL the vehicles I've ever owned. I can tell you that it's getting harder and harder to actually fix a modern vehicle by yourself. A lot of the electronics requires proprietary equipment just to diagnose and test things, which invariably sends you to the dealer when something in that department goes haywire. I as an individual, I can't even buy a damned paper repair manual for a modern car, let alone an electronic version and the electronic versions are usually only viewed for a monthly fee or fixed access time period. Even the independent shops are getting shafted. So I can imagine how most farmers, who've usually repaired their own equipment since they've been farming, are feeling about this right now.

[callmeslick]

did you read the article? It is about the level of demand put on farmers, who when they need mechanical repairs, it often is on-site in the field, and has to be done asap. I remember, two years back, when the new harvester the farmers who rent from me(and it was literally two months old) died in one of my smaller soybean fields. They had exactly 20 hours to get that crop harvested, or lose it to an approaching coastal storm. There is no luxury of time for them to deal with what Deere is doing here.
Is there a relation to consumer vehicles here? Sure, but the economic risk to the purchaser is not at such high stakes, IMHO.

oh, and no, it's been a LONG time since most farmers could do repairs themselves, or would wish to do so, when the equipment costs around $250,000 and UP to purchase. The issue is around local repair shops being able to do simple fixes.

[Ferno]

Well, to a commerical operator (think tractor trailers, five tons, that sort of thing) and they have perishables or rush cargo on board, any breakdown in the field is exactly like what the farmers go through. They have X amount of time to get the job done due to an approaching storm, ferry schedules, or any other event that puts pressure on a job being done, and if a breakdown happens on the road, they have to get it fixed NOW or they lose a lot.

[callmeslick]

probably very similar situation Ferno.

[Tunnelcat]

I read the article and was just making a more personal and related comment along the same lines referring to passenger vehicles, as NS alluded to. Make no mistake, auto manufacturers are already doing or moving towards the same thing as John Deere has already done. Software has become the new way for manufacturers to keep absolute control over their product and people will now be breaking the law who want to modify their own vehicles, let alone just repair them.