Buggy Software Update Bricks Some Jeep Hybrid Vehicles
from the whoops-a-daisy dept
Whoops! Some Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrid owners were stranded after the company pushed out a buggy software update that prevented the vehicles from running, and, at least according to one Reddit poster, resulted in the vehicle shutting off in the middle of a highway:
“I was driving 65 on the left lane of the highway when my car started slowing down. It started saying to put it into P and to push to start. The car was off and I couldn’t accelerate! I almost crashed trying to get onto the right lane shoulder 4 lanes over before it completely stopped and caused a huge accident.”
Several additional Reddit posters made unverified claims that they experienced similar problems.
According to Ars Technica, the company pushed out an uncooked telematics update for the Jeep Uconnect infotainment system last Friday. Major Friday updates are generally not the best choice given a reduction in support staff for major companies over the weekend (see: last year’s massive Crowdstrike outage).
Jeep pulled the update, but not before an unknown number of customers installed it. Jeep parent company Stellantis’ social engagement team told 4xe owners at a Jeep forum to ignore the update pop-up if they haven’t installed it yet, and avoid using either hybrid or electric mode if they had:
“Earlier today we had success with customers not using hybrid or electric mode. Please exercise extreme caution this evening if you have completed the update. If you have NOT completed the update and see the pop-up, please continue deferring so that the update does not go through. For a telematics box module update, you can defer infinitely, and it will expire within 30 days.”
Jeep has issued a fix for impacted owners, who have, once again, realized that in the internet era, you don’t always have control (or even have full ownership) over a lot of the stuff you own. For what it’s worth, Jeep and other automakers also historically have an abysmal track record when it comes to over-collecting customer driving data, failing to secure it, and selling access to your insurance company.
Filed Under: bugs, jeep, patch, security, smart, software, update, vehicles
Companies: jeep
Comments on “Buggy Software Update Bricks Some Jeep Hybrid Vehicles”
It was just an infotainment system update…
Please explain how this update can crash a car!
Re: Just wild guesses - not an expert
Perhaps they did something really stupid with CAN bus priority and made the infotainment system dominate the network? It really shouldn’t have happened but they also should have done a manual roll-out to test the patch before release.
Re: Re:
But coming back to “shouldn’t have happened”, they also should have tested, in the design stage, how much damage an intentionally-harmful program could do. Which would have revealed two choices: either develop the infotainment system to ASIL D, or properly isolate it from the safety-critical parts.
And, of course, once the safety-critical parts have been brought down by non-safety-critical parts, that should throw their own certifications into question. Which means that a hardware recall of those parts should be forced, not just a a software update to the infomainment system.
It’s one of the biggest cause of major disasters.
That, and pushing a small untested update because “it’s so small it won’t break anything”.
We’re used to Windows reboots after an update ruining an entire morning, but even so, I’ve never considered any update with “extreme caution” like my life could depend of it. What a great time to be alive.
Not "Bricked"
Misuse of the term “bricked” is one of my pet peeves.
Bricked means that the affected unit has been turned into a brick (or doorstop) and it can not be revived through normal update procedures.
These units were not bricked. There’s no need to replace any hardware modules or use any extraordinary procedures other than installing another update that makes the vehicle work again.
Re:
Similarly, people often mis-use the term “crash”, although they typically know enough to avoid doing so in relation to vehicles. I’m pretty sure I’ve even seen people on BestNetTech saying a networked system “crashed”, when it was merely overloaded to the point of unusability.
Uh, is there not even a setting whereby the update will process at a time when the car is parked at home for the day? Or is it just random updates installing “in the background” while you can keep
workingdriving?Crashed the software, crash the vehicle
Just imagine if the buggy update was mandatory in order to use the vehicle.