A hacker has made the legendary title from id Software run on John Deere tractors. Behind this is the desire for freedom.
What device hasn’t the original Doom from 1993 been made to run on? Piano, ultrasound machine, calculator, digital camera – even a pregnancy test, all have been there. Now tractors are also joining this illustrious group.
However, this is less about the need of some farmers to hunt down a few zombies after fertilising the field, and more about the desire to finally gain more control over their own expensive working equipment. We will now explain to you how exactly these two facts fit together.
Claim for free tractor repair
The bone of contention is the software used by manufacturers like John Deere, which many farmers say is too restrictive and prevents quick repairs to the machines. The principle is already known from some passenger cars: Only certified dealers and workshops have important tools for necessary repairs. It is no longer possible to tinker with them yourself.
And that annoys the customers, who already gather on the internet and exchange unofficial repair instructions. Moreover, the hacker Sick.Codes has felt called to solve this matter in his own way: by a jailbreak
of the tractor software, as already known from smartphones and other consumer electronics.
This would give farmers more control over the machines, but would also expose them to a certain security risk, since opening the manufacturer’s software would of course also undermine protective functions. A risk that many of them would apparently take.
That is why the choice fell on Doom
But why Doom of all things, the first-person shooter forebear from 1993? Apart from the cult status in terms of porting already mentioned at the beginning, the game is apparently also a good gauge of the hacker’s abilities in itself. In a conversation with the website futurezone.at, Sick.Code says about it:
“Doom means completeness, haha, and if I can make Doom work, I can make anything work. […] Hacking tractors has looked like a massive challenge to me. And as a hacker, I love challenges, otherwise I get bored”
The endeavour was not easy, however. The hacker reportedly spent months tinkering with the codes of the tractor software before finally gaining full access. He even had to solder his own modules to the control unit’s main board to get there.
“I started looking into it in February and then kept at it. The hack is very complicated, but it doesn’t involve any modifications to the John Deere software. I just added my own code, as well as open-source code from Fedora Linux “
But the result is quite respectable:
Playing Doom on a John Deere tractor display (jailbroken/rooted) at @defcon pic.twitter.com/ih0QUTGNuS
– Sick.Codes (@sickcodes) August 14, 2022
But according to Sick.Codes, the whole procedure could be solved in the future in the form of a tool to save farmers all the hassle. For him, the venture also had a noble purpose, according to an interview with Wired magazine:
“We want farmers to be able to fix their own stuff when something goes wrong, and that also means being able to fix the software in their tractors and make decisions about it”
Are you a virtual farmer in Farming Simulator 22? If you’ve already harvested the fattest potatoes, the greenest lettuce and the juiciest tomatoes and are now yearning for new challenges, the announcements made at the recent FarmCon 2022 in-house exhibition should make you rejoice!
Do you understand the farmers’ desire for freedom of choice with their machines? Or do you agree with the manufacturers and say: This software corset is completely appropriate for the sake of safety? Feel free to write us your opinion on this topic in the comments!
