Tesla Recruits Hackers to Boost Vehicle Security

As reported by ComputerWorld: Electric carmaker Tesla Motors wants security researchers to hack its vehicles. In coming months, the Silicon Valley based high-tech carmaker will hire up to 30 full-time hackers whose job will be to find and close vulnerabilities in the sophisticated firmware that controls its cars.

"Our security team is focused on advancing technology to secure connected cars," a company spokesman said via email. The focus is on "setting new standards for security and creating new capabilities for connected cars that don't currently exist in the automotive industry. The positions are full time, and we will have internship opportunities as well."

Tesla's cars are among the most digitally connected vehicles in the industry with the battery, transmission, engine systems, climate control, door locks and entertainment systems remotely accessible via the Internet.


So the company has a lot at stake in ensuring that the connectivity that allows its vehicles to be remotely managed doesn't also provide a gateway for malicious hackers.

Security researchers have already shown how malicious attackers can break into a car's electronic control unit and take control of vital functions including navigation, braking and acceleration.

In 2013, two researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) showed how they could take control of a vehicle through the controller area network (CAN) used by devices in a car to communicate with each other. The researchers showed how attackers could send different commands to a car and cause it to brake or accelerate suddenly or jerk its steering wheel in different directions.

In that study, the researchers needed physical access to the CAN bus to carry out the attack. However, researchers have noted that similar attacks can be carried out wirelessly by accessing the CAN bus through Bluetooth connections, compromised Android smartphones and vehicle tracking and navigation systems like OnStar.

Such concerns have begun gaining wider attention with the federal government's plans to require all vehicle manufacturers in the U.S. to incorporate vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications capabilities in all light vehicles over the next few years.

The goal is to have a standard in place that would allow vehicles to automatically exchange information, such as speed and location data, with each other, with a view to avoiding collisions.

In a notice in the Federal Register this week, the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHSTA) said it was seeking comments on the privacy and security implications of V2V technology.

"Some crash warning V2V applications, like Intersection Movement Assist (IMA) and Left Turn Assist (LTA), rely on V2V-based messages to obtain information to detect and then warn drivers of possible safety risks in situations where other technologies have less capability," the agency noted.

Tesla has been among the most proactive carmakers in addressing potential security threats. It was the only automaker to attend the recent Def Con security conference in Las Vegas, where a security executive took the opportunity to promote the company's responsible vulnerability reporting program and to recruit new team members.

The company says it has a policy of not taking legal action against security researchers who hack into its in-car systems so long as they comply with its responsible disclosure practices, which include full vulnerability disclosure and good faith efforts to avoid data destruction and privacy violations. It offers a bounty to hackers who help uncover particularly serious flaws in its firmware.

Tesla even maintains a security researcher hall of fame listing the names of about 20 researchers who have so fair reported confirmed vulnerabilities to the company.

Apple and Google Crush Map Patent in Early Test of Patent Office’s New Appeal System

As reported by GigaOM: An appeals board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled last week that all 27 claims contained in a shell company’s 2003 patent are invalid, dealing what is likely to be a fatal blow to the company’s lawsuit against Apple and Google over map displays in the iPad and iPhone.

In a unanimous ruling, three judges of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found that the patent claims, which are for a method of displaying street level images next to a map, were obvious or not new. Here is an image of the technology in question:


The owner of the patent, a Florida-based patent troll called Jongerius Panoramic Technologies LLC, sued both Apple and Google in 2012, because of the companies’ inclusion of Google Maps’ “Street View” feature in the iPad and iPhone.

In response, the two tech giants — which frequently clash with each other on intellectual property issues — filed a joint petition to invalidate the patent, citing so-called prior art, including journal articles and earlier patents. The Board pointed to images like the one below, from U.S. Patent No. 6,346,938, in its 68-decision to side with Apple and Google:


For Jongerius Panoramic, which can be called a troll since it doesn't have a business outside of litigation, the Board’s finding all but dooms its patent lawsuit, which is currently on hold in California federal court. Reached by phone, a lawyer for the shell company declined to comment or say if Jongerius will appeal the decision to a specialized patent appeals court.

The Board’s decision is significant not only because it sees Google and Apple on the same side of a patent issue, but because it shows how a new Patent Office appeals system is working as a new tool to eliminate bad patents.

The system, known as 'inter partes' review, came into effect in 2013 last year as a result of the America Invents Act of 2012. It allows third parties to challenge patents before administrative judges, who have received over a 1000 petitions, but only began issuing decisions in recent months.

While the disgraced former Chief Judge of the patent appeals court bemoaned the new Board last year as a “death squad” for patents, it appears to be fulfilling its function of weeding out patents that the Patent Office should never have granted in the first place. Meanwhile, the Patent Office, which has been blamed for fueling the patent troll problem, is attracting new criticism over a wage fraud epidemic and a culture of slapdash approvals.

Here’s the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruling, which is a slog, but is a good window into the arcane process by which patents are granted and challenged.

JAVAD GNSS Introduces TRIUMPH-F1 UAV

As reported by GPS World: JAVAD GNSS is introducing its new unmanned aerial vehicle with the dramatic flourish of a video showing the UAV in flight, accompanied by the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The TRIUMPH-F1 unmanned aerial vehicle is based on the JAVAD GNSS TRIUMPH-1. TRIUMPH-1 is the company’s field-tested high-precision geodetic GNSS receiver with 864 channels to track all current and future GNSS signals.

When used on the ground, the TRIUMPH-F1 can function as a TRIUMPH-1 base or rover. The four motor arms (for eight motors) are detachable. There are four screw inserts in the bottom to attach the TRIUMPH-F1 to a pole mount for field use.

The TRIUMPH-F1 features user-friendly mission programming. The four lithium polymer batteries that power the eight propeller motors, arranged in a stacked quad formation, each have a test button and LEDs to indicate the current charge level, as well as accessible ports for easy charging.

The TRIUMPH-F1 also has two micro-SD slots for image storage, a SIM card slot, a USB connector for uploading flight plans and downloading collected images, and indicators for satellite tracking and communications. Other indicators are dedicated to flight status and gyro. It comes equipped with four angled documentation cameras and a downward high-precision camera for photogrammetry.

JAVAD GNSS will exhibit the new device at InterGeo, to be held October 7-9 in Berlin.

Two Galileo Satellites Lose Their Way

As reported by Physics.org: Two European Galileo satellites launched as part of a navigation system designed to rival GPS have failed to locate their intended orbit, launch firm Arianespace said Saturday.

The European Space Agency said an investigation had been launched into what it said were "the anomolies of the orbit injection" but that the satellites were being safely controlled.

The satellites Doresa and Milena took off from the Kourou space centre in French Guiana aboard a Russian-made rocket on Friday after a 24-hour delay because of poor weather.

"Observations taken after the separation of the satellites from the Soyuz VS09 (rocket) for the Galileo Mission show a gap between the orbit achieved and that which was planned," the Arianespace said in a statement.

"They have been placed on a lower orbit than expected. The teams of industries and agencies involved in the early operations of the satellites are investigating the potential implications on the mission," it said.

The 5.4 billion euro ($7.2 billion) Galileo constellation is designed as an alternative to the existing US Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russia's Glonass, and will have search-and-rescue capabilities.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, France's Galileo coordinator, told AFP it would be "complicated" to correct the orbit of the two satellites.

"We are trying to see if we can remedy the situation in the coming hours," he said.

The European Space Agency said both the satellites were being "safely controlled" from its operations centre in Germany.

Initially, Arianespace had said that the satellites had separated from the mothership to enter into free-flight orbit as planned just under four hours after launch.

Factfile on the European global navigation system Galileo

"These two satellites are the first of a new type of satellite that are fully owned by the EU, a step towards a fully fledged European-owned satellite navigation system," the European Commission, which funds the project, said Friday.

'Technical difficulties'

Four Galileo satellites have been launched previously—one pair in October 2011 and another a year later.

They are the nucleus of the constellation orbiting Earth at an altitude of 23,500 kilometers (14,600 miles), and will later be brought to full operational capability.

The launch of the latest pair, named by two European schoolchildren who won a drawing competition, had been delayed for over a year due to what the ESA described as "technical difficulties in the setting up of the production line and test tools".

Arianespace said Thursday it had signed a deal with the ESA to launch 12 more satellites from 2015 onwards.

In March last year, the agency announced the first four test satellites had passed a milestone by pinpointing their first ground location, with an accuracy of between 10 and 15 metres (32 to 49 feet).

For its ninth liftoff from Guiana Friday, the Soyuz rocket carried a total load of 1.6 tonnes, including the two satellites weighing 730 kilos (1,600 pounds) each.

"We are extremely proud to have sent the first two operational satellites in the Galileo constellation into orbit today," Arianespace chairman Stephane Israel had said Friday.

High precision

Two more satellites will be launched at the end of 2014, when initial Galileo services were expected to begin.

It is unclear whether Saturday's "anomaly" will affect this schedule.

The Galileo constellation is scheduled to have 24 operational satellites by 2017, with six backups to join the fleet at a later date.

Operating at a higher altitude than GPS, Galileo's satellites have a stronger signal and higher inclination angle, providing better ground visibility, particularly in built-up areas.

They are also equipped with the most accurate atomic clocks ever used in navigation, with a precision of one second in three million years.

Ultra-precise time measurement is crucial in satellite navigation, as calculations are based on the length of time it takes a signal to reach ground stations. An error of just one billionth of a second can lead to a positioning deviation of several dozen centimeters back on Earth.

GPS is Tracking the West’s Vanishing Water

The San Joaquin River rounds a bend North of Kerman, California.  Just downstream, the river runs dry.

As reported by National Geographic: Throughout the western United States, a network of Global Positioning System (GPS) stations has been monitoring tiny movements in the Earth's crust, collecting data that can warn of developing earthquakes.

To their surprise, researchers have discovered that the GPS network has also been recording an entirely different phenomenon: the massive drying of the landscape caused by the drought that has intensified over much of the region since last year.

Geophysicist Adrian Borsa of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his colleagues report in this week's Science that, based on the GPS measurements, the loss of water from lakes, streams, snowpack, and groundwater totals some 240 billion metric tons—equivalent, they say, to a four-inch-deep layer of water covering the entire western U.S. from the Rockies to the Pacific. (Related: "Water's Hidden Crisis"

The principle behind the new measurements is simple. The weight of surface water and groundwater deforms Earth's elastic crust, much as a sleeper's body deforms a mattress. Remove the water, and the crust rebounds.

As the amount of water varies cyclically with the seasons, the crust moves up and down imperceptibly, by fractions of an inch—but GPS can measure such small shifts. (Related: "California Snowpack Measure Shows No End in Sight for Drought")

Borsa knew all this when he started to study the GPS data. He wasn't interested in the water cycle at first, and for him the seasonal fluctuations it produced in the data were just noise: They obscured the much longer-term geological changes he wanted to study, such as the rise of mountain ranges.

When he removed that noise from some recent station data, however, he noticed what he describes as a "tremendous uplift signal"—a distinct rise in the crust—since the beginning of 2013. He showed his findings to his Scripps colleague Duncan Agnew.

"I told him, 'I think we're looking at the effect of drought,'" Borsa remembers. "He didn't believe me."

The Dry Land Rebounds

But Borsa was right. As he, Agnew, and Daniel Cayan of Scripps report in Science, the recent uplift spike is consistent across the U.S. West, and consistent with recent declines in precipitation, streamflow, and groundwater levels. With a great weight of water removed, the crust is rebounding elastically across the whole region.  

The median rise across all the western GPS stations has been four millimeters, just under a sixth of an inch. But the Sierra Nevada mountains, which have lost most of their snowpack, have risen 15 millimeters—nearly six-tenths of an inch.

The GPS data complements satellite observations from NASA's ongoing Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE. The GRACE satellites measure small changes in the Earth's gravity field caused by the movement of water on and under the Earth's surface, allowing researchers to estimate groundwater and soil moisture conditions around the world. GRACE can operate where GPS networks don't exist—much of Africa and South America, for instance.

But where it's available, as in the western U.S., GPS data can provide a more rapid and detailed picture of drought and its causes.

"We only see the big picture," says Stephanie Castle, a water resources specialist at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of a recent study that used GRACE data to quantify groundwater loss in the Colorado River Basin. "The uplift data can point out more specifically where the depletion is happening."

Where the Water Goes

This new precision has big political implications: With more than 99 percent of California still in a severe drought, and rights to its surface water severely overallocated even in a good year, many of the state's farmers are supplementing their water supplies by pumping more water from underground aquifers.

In the Central Valley so much groundwater has been extracted that the ground has subsided more than 30 feet in some places—swamping the much smaller regional uplift caused by the elastic rebound of the underlying crust.

A farmworker shifts a pipe near Huron, California.  The drought has already cost field-work jobs and will likely cost more.

California has some of the weakest groundwater regulations in the nation, and access to its well-drilling records is highly restricted. The GPS data isn't detailed enough to point fingers at individual farmers, but its 125-mile resolution is good enough to identify especially profligate regions.

As climate change worsens water stress throughout the American West and beyond, such knowledge may well be vital. Borsa and his colleagues started out trying to filter the noise of the water cycle out of the GPS data; they ended up showing that the GPS network could help reveal what's really going on with water.

"All of a sudden we've turned the whole thing around," Borsa says. "It's a huge change, and it makes the network useful to whole new branches of scientists and managers."

SpaceX Test Flight Detonated Over Texas Town

As reported by NBC News: A SpaceX prototype rocket automatically detonated after an "anomaly" was detected during a test flight Friday in McGregor, Texas, the company told NBC News Friday night. No one was injured.

John Taylor, a spokesman for SpaceX, said the rocket was a three-engine version of the F9R test vehicle, the successor to the company's Grasshopper, a prototype intended to pave the way for fully reusable rockets that would fly themselves back home. It's tested at the company's rocket development facility near McGregor, which employs 250 people.

"During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission," Taylor said in an email to NBC News. A representative of the Federal Aviaton Administration was present, he said.

How to Build a Tesla Supercharger DC Fast-Charging Site

As reported by Green Car Reports: As more public charging stations are built, electric-car drivers have access to increasingly-large areas of the U.S.

Owners of the Tesla Model S plug-in car largely rely on the company's Supercharger network, which can now facilitate a cross-country trip on one route, with more to come.

But what does it actually take to build a Supercharger station? A lot of digging, apparently.

This diagram and photos of Electric Conduit Construction working at a new Supercharger site in Goodland, Kansas, surfaced on Teslarati.

They show a bit of the process of installing DC fast-charging stations--which involves trenching and running high-capacity electric cables well before the charging stations themselves are installed.

The Superchargers are sited in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express hotel; the company had to dig trenches so underground power conduits can be laid by the local utility.

Tesla Supercharger DC fast-charging site, Goodland, Kansas. Photo by Electric Conduit Construction.

These conduits connect the charging stations to a power distribution center, which in turn is connected to a transformer that provides the power for charging cars.

It took 11 days to install the six charging stalls in Goodland, located in the northeast corner of the state.

Since the first Supercharger site opened in 2012, Tesla has steadily expanded the network to make long-distance trips easier for Model S owners.

Supercharger stations could become even more numerous over the next few years if carmakers accept Tesla CEO Elon Musk's suggestion to use the Supercharger as a new fast-charging standard. It's now one of three such standards.

The other two are the CHAdeMO standard currently favored by Nissan and Mitsubishi, and the Combined Charging Standard that is starting to be built into small numbers of vehicles by several U.S. and German manufacturers.

Tesla officials have met with their counterparts from BMW and Nissan to discuss charging back in June, although nothing substantial from these talks has come to light thus far.

Tesla Supercharger DC fast-charging site, Goodland, Kansas. Photo by Electric Conduit Construction.

Less dramatic is the progress with Tesla's other electric-car charging technology: battery swapping.

Over a year after Musk first demonstrated battery swapping, no apparent progress has been made.

Battery-swapping would have originally garnered Zero-Emission Vehicle credits from the California Air Resources Board, but that regulatory body has proposed changing its rules.

Without that financial incentive, it seems Supercharging will remain the preferred way for extending a Tesla's range for the time being.

That means contractors like the ones in Goodland should have plenty of work to come, from the many locations marked "Future" on Tesla's Supercharger maps.