On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Tim May wrote:
Unlikely. Getting juice into the innards of a box in a way so as to overwrite data is not nearly so simply as applying sparky things to the outside of the box. Lots of reasons for this.
The idea wasn't about overwriting the data. The idea was about frying the chip with the data inside (and if all the other chips inside the box become a collateral damage, let's that be so). As long as it is outside the technological abilities of the given adversary to retrieve the data from the fried chip, the objective is reached. The idea also wasn't about the outside of the box, I thought rather disconnecting the power leads and blasting the spark into the power-GND pair, or into the (disconnected, we don't want to kill the entire car electronics) data bus. With a bit of luck, the spark could get through the filters and into the Vcc pins of the chips.