You can play Doom, id Software’s acclaimed horror game, on just about anything, and now, thanks to the efforts of diligent hacker modders, you can even play it on a tractor. Sick Codes and Skelegant, the hackers in question, jailbroken at DefCon 2022 (first seen by Wired), a convention dedicated to hacking and the people who do it. But the daring act of hosting an FPS game on a tractor was more than just fun or a chance to take down some demons while out on the farm. Sick Codes wanted to show how easy it was to bypass John Deere tractor computers by pointing out several flaws in the manufacturer’s ongoing arguments against allowing farmers to repair their equipment.
“Turns out our entire power system is based on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware with LTE modems.” Kyle Vince, the CEO of e-commerce and parts supply company Ifixit, tweeted. “John Deere has repeatedly told regulators that farmers cannot be trusted to repair their equipment. This innovative work will allow farmers to regain control of their equipment. »
Wired’s report says the leak was not an attack. Instead, it discovered easily exploitable functionality in the tractors’ poorly maintained IT infrastructure. This is also not new for a hacker. Sick Codes did another demo during DefCon 2021 and saw the results soon after: John Deere made changes to their systems to address the issues identified by Sick Codes.
“Farmers prefer older equipment simply because they need reliability. They don’t want anything to go wrong at the most important time of the year when they have to get things out of the ground,” Sick Codes told Wired. “So that’s what we should all want too. We want farmers to be able to fix their machines if something goes wrong, and now that means being able to fix or make decisions about their tractor software.
Find out the whole story at Wired, and if you’re looking for free, hack-free PC gaming, we’ve got you covered too.
Source : PC Gamesn
