The Chaser Report - Hackseat Driver

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Dom reports on a major security breach that should have owners of BYD cars fearing for their lives. Fortunately nobody who hosts this program is foolish enough to own such a vehicle. Plus, how is Bondi Rescue legal? ---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And just a quick heads up, that as ever we will be taking the school holidays off, which means the next two weeks after this week. But Charles, in, I think what is our last episode for non-paying subscribers until that point, can I ask you a question? It's a really frank question?

Oh, yeah. Have you had a chance to build your dreams? Oh, God. You're referring, of course, to the slogan that's on the back of a lot of BYD cars. Build your dream. Which I think is when they've phased that out. Yes, they have. They haven't put it on the cars in a while.

And I think that's because it is really a reminder of how embarrassing it is when, yeah, just when. you know, like, oh, it's so embarrassing. Who, ah, who thought that was a good idea? Who went into a meeting and came out going, that was a satisfying meeting? Ah, ugh. Yeah, I've always been very amused by cars with, like the Atto, also very strange name, with Build Your Dreams written on the back. Did you know that it's actually a acronym?

Yes, I think it is because what you mean by that is they came up with the thing, B-YD, because I think they just want to sound like BNW, and then in Chinese, that's sort of, you know, close enough, whatever, that's not even their language. Actually, not even. It's even more random than that. I will, I'll tell you why it's called BYD shortly, but I will also just say, if any BYD owners and drivers are listening, I hope you don't mind. I hope your dreams include getting hacked very easily. Oh, okay. Because I own a B.Y.D.

Oh, yes, you do, don't you? That's right. Yeah, this is going to be good. Let's find out whether your dream is about to come true. If you dream of being surveilled. Maybe you've got a kink that you like people watching, you know, driving. Oh, dear, this isn't sound good. It's coming up after this. So just on the name, B.D, it's in Chinese, it's called B.

And they just basically, that's the pinion initials, you know, the translation system. It's named after the Yadi roberation system. It's named after the Yadi rober. in Darping New District. Oh, okay. So it was named after something. Yeah. And they added the letter, the B character, to prevent duplication and to give them an alphabetical

advantage in trade shows. They wanted to be the first in the list. Right. And B-YD didn't they call themselves A-Y-D? Yeah, well, exactly. And so they, when they first participated in an American show, they thought, build your dreams would be a brilliant idea. Yes.

Fortunately, they're now phasing that out. Yep. Anyway, more relevantly, Charles, two things. BYD have absolutely exploded, and I'm not talking about the batteries. I mean, they're massively popular now in Australia. They're amongst the most popular cars, if not the most popular cars on the road. Well, isn't it available between Toyota? Of the chaser, have bought one.

But the ABC this week, have you started a trend, Charles, with your, are lots of people copying you as an influencer? What can I say? It's a car. It's a car. It goes, it drives. I've never really been a car person. So I don't really know beyond that. But, you know, like when I go to the shops, take my car, come home, it drives,

seems to work, hasn't exploded, better than a Tesla, you know, pretty good. Is that? Yeah. Well, it's definitely better than the Tesla because it's not run by a far right fascist. It's run by a slave driving population of authoritarian. Completely different. So the ABC for Four Corners this week, they got a hacker to try. and hack into a B-Y-D shark.

This is the Ute, the hybrid Ute. It's driven by a cabinet minister as well. And so this reporter, Angus Grigg, was driving it along the street. And then the hacker starts controlling it remotely. Yeah. And tried to figure out how, and the hacker, I'm Dan Freschik, I think it is, how he pronounced his name. He said, well, it was a lot easier to get into than I was expecting.

Right. And among the things that he was able to do, he turned the headlights off. in the middle of a busy road. He was able to... There was no password to protect the system. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. No, no, no. This is...

Oh, we're going down a very dangerous path here, Dom. Because if you think that it's a good idea to have a password for your fucking car, next we'll be talking two-factor authentication. Next, it'll be like, oh, sorry, you've got to prove you're not a robot to, get in this car, no fucking way. I would prefer that some journalists from Four Corners can occasionally hack through a fucking car than to have a fucking password for one. A two-factor protection.

All right. Put a pin in that one. Let me just tell you what he was able to do, this hacker, by getting in. Nothing alarms me so far. Like, okay, so he turned off my front lights. Locks the doors. Locks you back on again. What?

What? Locks you in. Locks you in. Locks you into the car. Right. Blasts music over the speakers, controls images on the infatement screen. Oh, like communist propaganda. Turns the wipers on and off at top speed.

It sprays the windscreen with water and turns all the lights on and off. Right. And can make it constantly say, for safety, use low beam. It just sounds like a normally malfunctioning Tesla to me. Now, you can't. Fortunately, the cameras and the brakes are better protected. Right. Well, but it also, like many of these cars, has a camera feed.

And actually, in. The UK, they've banned all Chinese EVs, even EVs made with Chinese components, that might include the Tesla, I'm not sure, from parking within three kilometres of any military installation. And we've got Cabinet ministers, including Don Farrell, driving around in these cars. But isn't the point, but hang on, hang on, this is another one of these things like, oh, no, the Chinese can be listening into us. But surely, with all the sort of smart cars from American brands like Tesla, it just means the American government can be, like, choose your poison.

Like, somebody, like, oh, no, Elon Musk can be listening in to me is just as bad. Like, there's no, like, if you're going to have all this smart stuff, of course it's going to be out there, because that's just how it is. Like, by that logic, like, why, why are we scared about Chinese things, but not scared about Teslers, which do exactly the same thing? all the cameras and the microphones and everything. To be fair, we have previously done an episode on the creepy surveillance of Tesla's

and someone actually hacking into Elon Musk's own car and finding, I think he was in the middle of having one of his, you know, of impregnation at the time, I'm not sure. On average, he would have been on any given night.

Like, like, I kind of feel like, you know, the solution that this sort of, like, clearly this is just a sort of, oh,

isn't China dangerous, right? Like it's clearly just some sort of messaging thing out of, you know, that, you know, the same people who think that orcas are great, you know, that sort of style of politics. But the actual logical conclusion isn't, oh, okay, well, we'll have to ban Chinese cars. It's like, okay, well, cabinet ministers are going to have to fucking ride Commonwealth penny farthings from now on. Because everything since then can be used as a surveillance device. But so, but it's particularly EVs.

So China, five years ago, banned Tesla's from political enclaves and defense sites. So they've been aware of this for quite some time. So China's banned Tesla's for exactly the same reason. But the best bit of the story, I think, is what BYD did after Four Corners started asking them about privacy. They solved it immediately. Oh, wow. Okay. That's pretty good.

Yeah, really impressive. So straight away, within four days of getting questions from Four Corners, they removed the words, China and surveillance from their privacy policy in Australia. And so, yeah. In what context was that used? The website said that the new policy no longer applied to vehicles and directed users to a separate document on the app. And so they're not actually stopped from transferring data overseas, but it says

they'll comply with the laws. But that's good. But no, look, I take your point, and this is something that I remember Bob Carr making this argument as well, is that there's a bit of, you know, cyanophobia. There are people who are particularly worried about China. I'm not saying China are the goodies here. Like, I'm not saying that they're not spying on us. It's just like, yeah, sure, okay, if you're the defense minister,

maybe don't talk about top secret military installations in the back of your B.YD. On the other hand, I don't know whether, you know, like China knowing that I bought a whole lot of vinegar this week, because I was running low on white vinegar for my Greek salad, Is that huge of a national security issue? Well, I'll tell you what the problem is after the break. I love that their solution was to just remove the words from the privacy policy. But I'm not understanding what words were removed that made it work. China and surveillance.

They just moved to... So now that is don't address the issue at all. Oh, they just don't address it. Oh, okay. Yeah, well, that's perfect. So it's good as well. They've learned from Western politicians. They've learned from Western politicians about how to do that.

The Chaser Report. news a few days after it happens. So Charles, all right, I'm not going to go down the whole. I mean, one of the problems is that another brand Leap Motor, for instance, has cameras in its EVs that have been banned in government buildings in Australia. So there are some national security concerns with this stuff. But in terms of the consumers, it's not actually scary Chinese government, you know, surveilling all your data.

Frankly, I assume that most of the world's governments can already surveil all of our data or if they want them. If China wants to hack into our stuff, presumably they already can, as can everybody, including probably Australia even. Even Australia's cyber capabilities probably do this. The problem is that they have all of these inputs,

all of these systems, and that they're not protected. So it's actually the hackers that can break into the BIDs, not from the Chinese government. That's the problem. And so this security researcher from Four Corners, for instance, recorded the reporter, turned on the microphone,

was able to log all the audio, recorded him saying, hey Siri, and was able to use, use that then to remotely activate his iPhone and get all this detail data off that. Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. That's the concern. And this is true of so many devices.

There's been a new story in the past week that our favorite creepy smart glasses, we love a smart glasses, aren't we here on the Chase Report. Apparently, they are often, many of them are actually completely unencrypted. So that via our old friend Bluetooth, you can actually just without any protection with some models, just log on to any nearby Bluetooth smart glasses. and just access the images in it. There's no password or anything. You just have to pair to the device.

But surely the problem with that. And you can see what's going through the glasses. But surely the problem with that is that anyone who knows how to hack into smart glasses probably already has a pair on. So there's not hugely useful. I would know, though, about smart glasses that apparently in the paper today, there was a thing about how some Sydney Council is going to ban smart glasses at beaches. right, because they're having terrible trouble.

There you go. Brisbane has. Brisbane has at its pools. Right. But the thing that I thought was, hang on, aren't they already banned? Like, you can't just go and film random people that are, that's already illegal, isn't it? Or have I been missing out on this whole craze of going and invading people's privacy on beaches? Is it like, is that a, I would have thought that's just already illegal?

You shouldn't be able to film with. Anything, should you? Indeed. Isn't that the surveillance devices act? I think Bondi Rescue, for instance, is a disgrace. It's illegal. It should be illegal. I mean, all the real housewife shows, I assume, violate privacy laws.

Anyway, so the problem is that nobody, we're rushing to put cameras in all these things without making them in any way secure. And this is the whole point about the B.D not even having a password to get into it. Mm. Mm. And so on the bright side, Charles, I'm looking forward to hacking. into yours. Yes, and then you can see what I've bought. Because I, the secret conversations in the car. Yes. I mean, can't we set up, can't we on the bright side, can't we for our paying

subscribers? And that's how we, that's how we, that's how we win a war against China, because they'll be surveilling all their cars and they'll be bored to death by how boring our conversation is. We'll overwhelm, we'll overwhelm their servers with incredibly tedious conversations. I mean, perhaps this is a subscribe to the feed we should do. We should get people to listen to the Chaser report all 1325 episodes of it. Yes, in every smart car in Australia. In smart cars in Australia and the enemy would crumble. They'd go, no, stop it. Stop it anymore. And they'd wither. They'd wither under the satirical force of our brilliance, wouldn't they? But also, Charles, I mean, we should, just looking at value ad subscription options. I mean, I don't know

whether your B-YD's got Zoom in it, but my Tesla does. We could drive around doing a live Zoom from the Tesla for paying subscribers and show exactly how entertaining a conversation from a car can be. Well, I think what we should do is just put it up on the listener. Like if you're a VIP subscriber, simply hack into Dom's car and that's your subscriber edition of the Taser Report. I mean, you'd also, the main. The same thing you would hear if you're hacking into my car is songs from Gabby's dollhouse.

Oh, right. It's just songs from, it's just songs from Gabby's dollhouse. It's exciting stuff. Another way to win the war against China. I mean, if you want to be convinced not to have children, Gabby's dollhouse will do it for you. Gabby's amazing news from the Gabbyverse. Gabby's got a little sister because Gabby's into cats, right? All right.

Gabby, Gabby regularly, her favorite word is a meowsing. Is this an animated cartoon? What is? It is. It's actually an innovative mix of live action and cartoon. It's very groundbreaking. But Gabby has a,

Gabby's aging out, so they've introduced a little sister who's into dogs. It's never going to stop, is my point. I'm going to die before Gabby's dollhouse stops, make new episodes, possibly in a related instance. So there you go. Your B-YD,

that build your dreams, it should probably be Bluetooth your dreams, shouldn't it? Really. Yeah, well, it is. It is, I'll bet you the way they did it was through Bluetooth because with my BID, the app constantly is connecting by Bluetooth and giving me a whole lot of options to do things. Actually, you know what I've just realized? One of my favorite features of the Tesla, actually, is that you know how it, you know what it's key is?

What? Bluetooth. Like you walk up to the Tesla with your phone and it unlocks via Bluetooth. How has nobody stolen my car? Well, because Bluetooth doesn't work. I might as well just leave it unlocked. Yeah, they won't be able to connect. Actually, I'll just answer them.

Yeah. How am I getting into it? How are you getting it? Yeah, I think, yeah. All right. Well, look, I mean, come on board Chinese government. In the end of the day, we're here doing podcasting because we want listeners. I mean, what is a hacker, but just a listener who didn't follow the usual subscription walk through?

Well, I think that they should start counting hackers in terms of the radio ratings. And our podcast numbers would skyrocket. You can't tell me Carl Sandlands Live isn't already, including hackers. We're part of the Iconiclass Network. We will catch you if you're not a paying subscriber in two weeks' time. Otherwise, we'll keep going with the paid subscribers. Will we during school holidays? Yeah, during school holidays.

Yeah, we can do one a week for the paying people. Good on. Yeah, good on you. And who knows, we might even do some, we've got some exciting news actually before the end of the year. Yeah. There may be, you know, opportunities to. Experience the podcast in new ways or less, depending on your option. Yeah, you can choose.

You might even be able to see us. Wouldn't that be amazing? My goodness, what a ridiculous idea.