Friday, March 29

Try to rip it off, Dimitri: Russia stole tractors in Ukraine and now John Deere has disabled them


Russia had made a peculiar war booty during the conflict in Ukraine: it had stolen tons of grain and, attention, tractors. The Russians promised them very happily, but after moving them 800 km to the region where they planned to use them, they were surprised: there was no way to get rid of them.

The problem was not with the tractors. It turns out that the manufacturer, John Deere had disabled them remotely. This company has been criticized a lot for its techniques to prevent unauthorized repairs to its machines, but that same approach and the remote access capabilities of its software have served a unique function these days.

anti-looting technology

The War in Ukraine is causing striking situations that have a lot to do with the latest technological advances. A Ukrainian managed to track Russian troop movements when his AirPods were stolen, and that tracking was also raised by a professor from Monterey in California, who used Google Maps and radar images.

However, the last surprise was given by the tractors of the manufacturer John Deere. The company has been at the center of the debate for the right to repair in recent years: they have been proposing all kinds of technological measures to prevent those who buy the tractors from being able to repair them.

Russian troops stole agricultural equipment worth 5 million euros in the occupied city of Melitopol, in Ukraine. The stolen combines each with a value of 300,000 euroswere transferred to a town in Chechnya, 800 km away, but when the Russians tried to start them, they saw that it was not possible.

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John Deere had disabled them thanks to the remote locking function. Its agricultural equipment has long included functions like that or a GPS receiver that allows them to be located at all times – not to mention its renewed commitment to autonomous tractors – but the controversy is clear despite these events.

Hacking tractors with Ukrainian firmware is just the beginning of a new era of hacking

The software offers interesting advantages when it comes to updating and improving agricultural equipment —or correcting bugs, as if it were just another application on our mobile or PC—, but it is also a way of avoid interventions by users themselves. That has made hacking tractors and installing firmware to unlock them surprisingly common now.

John Deere is certainly not alone in go against “home repairs”. The mobile and laptop industry does not make it easy for us, but there are of course other manufacturers such as General Motors that even affirmed that this type of blocking of freedoms favors innovation.

That approach is of course controversial for many users trying to repair their own devices, and technology giants like Apple ended up having to redirect their strategies in that direction. Recently, the Cupertino firm announced its home repair program, but as we could see, many of them do not pay off.

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