This site has posted a few articles in the past about the trend of smart firearms. Here’s one. Here’s another. Whenever we post articles about smart guns we get a lot of comments and we know that pretty much all of you are against them.
They have too many drawbacks, and they take away our privacy. And one of the drawbacks that people fear is that they can be hacked or disabled somehow by someone not authorized to have access to the gun, which would make it useless in an emergency.
Well, those fears have been realized. In an interview with the magazine Wired, a hacker spoke about how easy it was to defeat the Armatix GmbH Smart System and its $1400 gun. The gun must be paired with an RFID-equipped wrist watch to be able to fire.
“Not only was it unsecured, it was unsecured in a way that I had not anticipated,” said Plore, which is the name the hacker uses in this interview.
Plore was able to jam the radio frequency band (916.5Mhz) and prevent the gun from firing when it should, extend the RFID authentication radius, and even defeat the electromagnetic locking system altogether by placing a $15 magnet near the breechblock.
Plore presented his findings at the DEFCON Hacking Conference which was held recently in Las Vegas. So now, not only can the gun be hacked, but lots of other hackers know how to do it now! I wouldn’t recommend this purchase, just in case you had any doubts.
Photo by Plore for wired.com
