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Want to Win a Bike Race? Hack Your Rival’s Wireless Shifters
Researchers have discovered a way that would allow anyone with a few hundred dollars to hack into a wireless gear-shifting systems used by the top cycling teams for events like the Tour de France.
At the Usenix Security Symposium earlier this week, researchers from UC San Diego and Northeastern University revealed a technique that would allow anyone with a few hundred dollars of hardware to hack Shimano wireless gear-shifting systems of the kind used by many of the top cycling teams in the world, including in recent events like the Olympics and the Tour de France. To carry out that eavesdrop-and-replay attack, the researchers used a $300 software-defined radio, an antenna, and a laptop, though they point out that their hardware setup could be miniaturized to the degree that it could be hidden along the sidelines of a race, in a cycling team car, or even in the back pouch of a rider's jersey, such as by implementing it in a Raspberry Pi mini-computer. More broadly, they argue that their radio-based bike hacking research is a cautionary tale about the temptation to add wireless electronic features to every technology, from garage doors to cars to bicycles, and the unintended consequences of that long-term trend—namely, that they've all become vulnerable to forms of replay and jamming attacks of the kind that Shimano is now scrambling to fix.
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