John Deere Tractor Bricks

[bivenator]

I found this article quite interesting. I hadn't realized the scope of this technology. This sort of tech makes me glad to have a 30 year old car that should run without needing permission to do so.

We had a conversation at work regarding the possibility of the remote log in pacemaker device being hacked. Pretty chilling.

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

Here’s a delicious story: CNN reports that Russian looters, collaborating with the Russian military, stole 27 pieces of John Deere farm equipment from a dealership in Melitopol, Ukraine, collectively valued at $5,000,000. The equipment was shipped to Chechnya, but it will avail the thieves naught, because the John Deere dealership reached out over the internet and bricked these tractors, using an in-built kill-switch.

Since that story ran last week, I’ve lost track of the number of people who sent it to me. I can see why: it’s a perfect cyberpunk nugget: stolen tractors rendered inert by an over-the-air update, thwarting the bad guys. It could be the climax of a prescient novella in Asimov’s circa 1996.

But I’m here to tell you: this is not a feel-good story.

[masraum]

I'm guessing those weren't plain Jane tractors. I suspect these are the very large, very high end devices used on bigger farms.

But there's some other interesting stuff in the article.

(not the whole article, just a few excerpts)

Deere perceived many opportunities to extract new sources of revenue from farmers.

For example, they fitted out their tractors with clusters of new sensors: torque sensors on the wheels that measured soil density, humidity sensors on the undercarriages that measured soil moisture, and location sensors on the roof that plotted density and moisture on a centimeter-accurate grid.

This information is very useful! Farmers can use it to practice “precision agriculture,” broadcasting their seed according to these maps to maximize yield.

But Deere farmers can’t get that data — at least, not on its own. Deere bundled that data with an app that comes with seed from Monsanto (now Bayer), its preferred seed vendor. The farmers generated the data by plowing their fields with their tractors, but Deere took the position that the farmers weren’t the owners of that data —Deere was.

Deere bundled the data with the farmer and sold both to Monsanto. The next time someone tells you “If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product,” remember this. These farmers weren’t getting free, ad-supported tractors. Deere charges six figures for a tractor. But the farmers were still the product. The thing that determines whether you’re the product isn’t whether you’re paying for the product: it’s whether market power and regulatory forbearance allow the company to get away with selling you.

But selling farmers their own soil telemetry is only the beginning. Deere aggregates all the soil data from all the farms, all around the world, and sells it to private equity firms making bets in the futures market. That’s far more lucrative than the returns from selling farmers to Monsanto. The real money is using farmers’ aggregated data to inform the bets that financiers make against the farmers.

could offer drivers is the option to turn off all that surveillance.

VIN-locking metastasized out of the automotive sector and took root in every part of our lives. Apple would love to VIN-lock its phone screens, and they’ve done so several times, but had to back down after customers and independent cracked-screen repair places raised hell. After the FTC and the Biden Administration threatened to directly regulate Apple to force it to facilitate repair, the company created an official home repair program, albeit a very limited one.

Other sectors have been more successful in rolling out VIN locking. One company that led the way here is Medtronic, the world’s largest med-tech company (and, thanks to an Irish reverse-merger, one of the world’s least-taxed med-tech companies).

For more than 20 years, Medtronic’s PB840 ventilators have been the workhorses of the field. But Medtronic decided to juice its profits by VIN-locking the parts in the PB840 (hospitals, like farmers, have fixed their own equipment since time immemorial: when a patient has a medical emergency, you need to be able to fix whatever piece of gear their doctors need, not call a manufacturer-authorized technician who’ll arrive days or weeks later).

That was terrible before the pandemic, but when the world’s demand for ventilators spiked just as Medtronic’s authorized service technicians were grounded, this VIN-locking racket became a major threat to public health.

Hospital technicians around the world scrambled to nurse their PB840s along, keeping them in service. A common PB840 repair involves swapping a working screen out of a busted ventilator into a working ventilator with a busted screen.

Screens are VIN-locked components, though, so the resulting, perfectly functional device would not work until an authorized tech flew out to the hospital and typed in an unlock code — and remember, the pandemic grounded all those technicians.

Thankfully, an anonymous Polish ex-Medtronic employee had kept the unlock code generator from his previous job, and he cloned it, packaged the resulting gadget in whatever enclosures he could find — old guitar pedals, table lamps and alarm-clocks — and mailed them to med-techs at hospitals around the world, saving lives.

Why did this hero remain anonymous? Because he was breaking the law. Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive bans the production of “circumvention devices” that bypass VIN locks. In the USA, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes trafficking in circumvention devices a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine — for a first offense.

Every three years, the US Copyright Office holds hearings on DMCA 1201, in which they entertain petitions to allow users of locked devices to bypass those locks (yes, you have to ask the US government for permission to reconfigure your own property, and yes, mostly, the answer is “no”).

In the 2017 edition of these exemption hearings, John Deere filed a stunning brief with the Copyright Office: in it, they explained that farmers do not own the tractors they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on.

In fact, the farmers can’t own these tractors, because the software that animates these tractors (and enforces VIN locks and restrictions on using your own data) belongs to John Deere for the full term of copyright — 90 years — and the farmers merely license that code, and they are bound by the terms of service they have to click “OK” on every time they switch on their ignitions.

Those terms specify that even if a farmer repairs their own tractor, swapping a broken part for a working one, they must pay hundreds of dollars and wait for days for an authorized Deere technician to come out to the end of their lonely country road to key in an unlock code.

This is the system that let the Ukrainian Deere dealership brick those tractors between Melitopol and Chechnya.

the author is a busy guy

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and blogger. He has a podcast, a newsletter, a Twitter feed, a Mastodon feed, and a Tumblr feed. He was born in Canada, became a British citizen and now lives in Burbank, California. His latest nonfiction book is How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. His latest novel for adults is Attack Surface. His latest short story collection is Radicalized. His latest picture book is Poesy the Monster Slayer. His latest YA novel is Pirate Cinema. His latest graphic novel is In Real Life. His forthcoming books include Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid (with Rebecca Giblin), a book about artistic labor market and excessive buyer power; Red Team Blues, a noir thriller about cryptocurrency, corruption and money-laundering (Tor, 2023); and The Lost Cause, a utopian post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias (Tor, 2023).

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Для этого есть конвертация bitzkit...

[A930Rocket]

I’ll have to talk to my son. He did programming for John Deere, but I think it was more along the lines of GPS and auto driving the tractor on the farm.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

I’ll have to talk to my son. He did programming for John Deere, but I think it was more along the lines of GPS and auto driving the tractor on the farm.

And I suspect those are the big self driving implements that are six figures that are discussed in the article.

[Bill Douglas]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

along the lines of GPS .

Good.

The west will know exactly where to send a rocket as punishment for theft.

[93nav]

Those terms specify that even if a farmer repairs their own tractor, swapping a broken part for a working one, they must pay hundreds of dollars and wait for days for an authorized Deere technician to come out to the end of their lonely country road to key in an unlock code.


This is grade A bs. I have seen plenty of videos of farmers repairing newer tractors without dealer involvement. Not talking about the compact tractors used on acreages either. If you get into changing ECU/ECMs, that I do not know about, and would not be surprised id a dealer needs to do something.

[A930Rocket]

Originally Posted by 93nav

Those terms specify that even if a farmer repairs their own tractor, swapping a broken part for a working one, they must pay hundreds of dollars and wait for days for an authorized Deere technician to come out to the end of their lonely country road to key in an unlock code.


This is grade A bs. I have seen plenty of videos of farmers repairing newer tractors without dealer involvement. Not talking about the compact tractors used on acreages either. If you get into changing ECU/ECMs, that I do not know about, and would not be surprised id a dealer needs to do something.

That’s a big reason my son left. He only worked there one year out of college, but said John Deere treats the farmer like crap.

[greglepore]

Another great JD trick-the only difference in hp in some of their high end tractors is code-they charge you more for the code that allows the greater hp. I get that it might lead to larger warranty exposure, but still...

[GH85Carrera]

In the era when the cops have been behind a GM product and can call the On-Star folks and turn the car they are chasing into a ever slowing vehicle and even disable it, and lock the doors, bricking a tractor is not a surprise.

Tesla can do the same thing to their cars. They have many options that are just a software upgrade for a few more bucks per month away.

[javadog]

The real crime is what John Deere does with the data they collect.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

In the era when the cops have been behind a GM product and can call the On-Star folks and turn the car they are chasing into a ever slowing vehicle and even disable it, and lock the doors, bricking a tractor is not a surprise.

Tesla can do the same thing to their cars. They have many options that are just a software upgrade for a few more bucks per month away.

You'd better cover the antenna on your El Camino with aluminum foil to keep "them" from killswitching it!

[daepp]

Ok, well, that article was horrifying...

[oldE]

I was talking to the guy at the local Deere place the other day. He said the tractors send a steady stream of data back to the service department about engine performance. Their tech can sometimes spot trouble before the operator is aware of the problem. If necessary, they can shut a unit down before harm is done, give the farmer a call and get a tech on way.
I suppose if you are running many units, they can function like a fleet manager.

Best
Les

[masraum]

Originally Posted by daepp

Ok, well, that article was horrifying...

Yep, good stuff!

Next up, when you buy your new smart house, before you can walk through the front door, you have to digitally sign the EULA which means that you don't own the house, the software company does. Or, you own the land and the building, but not the software that controls the lights, locks, HVAC, etc.... You can continue to live there if you don't pay the monthly subscription fees, but then you can't use any of the automated stuff.

[Captain Ahab Jr]

Farmers need to do this with their tractors...

[LWJ]

And to think we just bought a Gator.

Damn.

[Crowbob]

My brother-in-law is one of those guys who patrol Craigslist, Marketplace and whatever to buy old farm equipment. He fixes ‘em up to varying degrees of satisfaction then resells them. He argues, and I tend to agree, that the regular old non-digitized farm equipment (and vehicles) will rule some day.

He’s got tractors, combines, cultivators and whatever machines stacked in numerous barns.

But he’s sick.

I’m gonna tell my sister (his wife) if he croaks, I’d like to get first dibs for a fair price.

[asphaltgambler]

^^^^^ Don't think so^^^ A huge part of getting the most out of your harvest is exactly monitoring the soil, speed, depth and GPS position. Essentially accuracy. Its the difference between hoping there is a profit -to- knowing the profit % at harvest time

[daepp]

Originally Posted by asphaltgambler

^^^^^ Don't think so^^^ A huge part of getting the most out of your harvest is exactly monitoring the soil, speed, depth and GPS position. Essentially accuracy. Its the difference between hoping there is a profit -to- knowing the profit % at harvest time

I am no farmer, but if we apply it will be seen in other venues, couldn’t it be true that some of those types of sensors and monitors could be retrofit it to order equipment? I mean, look at all of the portable/Garmin type GPS is that people put in their cars when the technology became available after the cars were built. Just a thought. My $.02 anyways.