On Apr 3, 2013, at 12:00 PM, Michael Richardson <mcr+i...@sandelman.ca> wrote: > So, I have a question: how much privacy is actually contained in the > VIN or indexed by the VIN? Given that it's printed on the windshield. > Yes, it contains model, year and manufacturer of the car, but all of > that information is also visible by looking at the vehicle.
The fact that the VIN is printed on the windshield is not as practical a problem as it would be if the VIN could be trivially retrieved electronically. How big a privacy issue that is, I don't know, but it would certainly make tracking the car easy. > I am way more concerned about privacy concerns where the VIN, given that > it can be easily known, can then be used to derive the prefix that the > vehicle uses and then seek out that vehicle's systems electronically. Indeed, if a car thief wanted to hack their way into the car to steal it, being able to read the VIN off the window and then immediately identify which messages were coming from that car would be a minor or major problem, depending on how bad the security on the car was. -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPv6 working group mailing list ipv6@ietf.org Administrative Requests: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 --------------------------------------------------------------------
