As the internet has shown over the years, Doom can work on anything from a cardboard box to cleaning robots and even a single keyboard key, and we can now add a John Deere tractor to that list. Security researcher Sick Codes teamed up with Doom moderator Skelegant to run the game on a John Deere tractor screen and showcased the game at the Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas.
In the video released by Sick Codes, you can see how the game plays out as a kind of transparent overlay over the John Deere user interface. Sick Codes says the whole process took months and involved breaking the Linux system used by the John Deere 4240 tractor. Naturally, this version of Doom has been modified to take place in a cornfield where the player mows down enemies with a tractor.
Playing Doom on a John Deere tractor display (jailbroken/rooted) at @defcon pic.twitter.com/ih0QUTGNuS
— Sick.Codes (@sickcodes) August 14, 2022
But Sick Codes didn’t break the tractors just to get them to run Doom. According to a report from Wired, he designed and demonstrated a new breaking method that provides root access to the tractor’s system. This vulnerability can help farmers bypass software blocks that prevent them from repairing the tractor themselves. John Deere’s blocking of these repairs has been the subject of criticism in the past.
As noted by Wired, Sick Codes has managed to achieve “1.5GB of logs” that dealers can use to identify and diagnose problems. But he also found a way to gain root access by soldering the controls directly to the tractor’s circuit board. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple to get root access without the right equipment, but Sick Codes told Wired that “it would be possible to develop a tool based on vulnerabilities to perform the hacking method.”
John Deere’s technological grip on its tractors is capable of much more than just preventing repairs. Earlier this year, John Deere remotely locked its equipment after the Russians stole it from a farm in Ukraine, and it did the same at construction sites in China to comply with the country’s financing policies. In response to increased pressure from politicians, John Deere announced an initiative in March to make its software available to independent repair shops.
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