"Most people aren't going to be out using it for assassination, they will be using it for hunting. "I wouldn't be particularly worried," Auger said. The couple downplayed concerns that hackers could illicitly cause a shooter to miss his aim and endanger the wrong target, saying that the rifle is the first of its kind and only a thousand or so of them have been sold. "At that point, their rifle would misbehave wherever they are," Sandvik said. Hackers would typically need to be within 100 feet or less to connect with the rifle's wireless computing system, which must be turned on by whoever is using the weapon.Īside from tinkering with parameters such as wind that influence aim, the couple found a way to make permanent updates to their software powering the scope. They could, however, remotely prevent the rifle from firing and by tapping into the smartphone app they could see what the person using the rifle sees through the scope. Squeezing the trigger of the rifle is done manually, so, while hackers could alter the aim, they could not fire the weapon, according to Sandvik and Auger. "It was a fun day, tearing apart a $13,000 rifle," Auger said. The couple made a side-project of hacking into the weapon, finding a way to remotely reset parameters used by the computerized scope to tell the rifle where to shoot. She easily convinced her husband they should buy one of the $13,000 rifles. Sandvik said she immediately wanted to get her hands on it, to hack in and see what they could find. While at a gun show, the couple spied a TrackingPoint self-aiming rifle that boasted sophisticated features, including a smart scope powered by the Linux operating system and smartphone applications. "I told her we needed to go to a gun show, it doesn't get more American than that." ![]() "Runa is from Norway with a romanticized vision of the United States, loving all things American," Auger said as he and his wife discussed their findings at Black Hat. Husband and wife hackers Michael Auger and Runa Sandvik will share their work on Friday at the notorious Def Con hacker gathering in Las Vegas, a day after making a presentation at the Black Hat cyber defense conference. Las Vegas - A dive into a gun-loving side of US culture by a pair of computer security researchers led them to hack into a digitally-enhanced sniper rifle.
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