Self-aiming rifles, powered by an array of sensors and computer technology, can greatly improve accuracy — but that advance comes with a security cost.
Runa Sandvik and Michael Auger have spent a year develop techniques to hack the TrackingPoint self-aiming rifles, gaining entry via the weapon’s Wi-Fi connection and then taking advantage of software flaws. They have been able to make the guns miss their targets, switch targets or shut down entirely, according to Wired.
“You can make it lie constantly to the user so they’ll always miss their shot,” said Sandvik. Or, if the hacker simply shuts down the computer, “you have a $6,000 to $7,000 computer you can’t use on top of a rifle that you still have to aim yourself.”
The guns use Wi-Fi to transmit video. If, for example, a hunter wants to let his family back home watch the pursuit and take-down of the quarry, he can do so. However, anyone within Wi-Fi range can also get into the weapon’s system using the default password (if the gun’s owner leaves it unchanged) and change the variables that the weapon uses to calculate trajectories. Changing the value for the weight of the bullet, for example, can skew it to the right or left, according to Wired.
The hackers, a married couple, plan to present their work at the Black Hat conference next week.
