Fly By Wire, addendum

by craig nelms

I received a comment from Kenneth T. who was wondering whether a Faraday cage might work to isolate the ECM on a modern vehicle from a wireless “hack”. A Faraday cage is simply a cage made of metal in which all six sides are in contact with each other, in essence grounded to each other. This will stop any frequency, the wavelength of which is larger than the holes in the cage, from penetrating the cage. So if the cage has half-inch holes, any frequency that has a wavelength longer than a half inch will be blocked. Many people who install a Faraday cage in their homes line the walls of a room with metal sheeting such as simple aluminum foil. This will stop even frequencies with with very small wavelengths such as microwaves, however ventilation can be a problem.

I happen to have quite a bit of experience blocking frequency fields and beams. I am very sensitive to EMF (electro-magnetic frequencies) and can pick up on a field very quickly. Needless to say, I don’t carry a cell phone. I can literally walk around your home, inside and out, and point out the sources of EMF, particularly if I am hit with a frequency for a while first, which makes my brain, probably my pineal gland, even more sensitive. And by the way, and since I know the vast majority of you are “deaf” to frequencies, a tin-foil hat, as the govt always refers to it, in reality aluminum foil, does actually stop EMF to a certain degree, but just to the area it is covering. That’s probably why they ridicule it; it works!

So there are two problems with using a Faraday cage like design on an ECM. The easiest way to do this would be to wrap the ECM in layers of heavy duty aluminum foil, making sure each layer is in contact with the last. You can test this out for yourself by taking a cell phone and wrapping it in aluminum foil and then calling it from another phone. Its been a long time since I’ve done this test but I found it takes about six layers of regular aluminum foil to block the signal, maybe more on a newer phone. However, the ECM in your car is going to have a large bundle of wires plugged into it, so it can’t be completely wrapped. Wrapping the wire harness for a short distance from where it plugs into the ECM might take care of this opening. Any opening will be exploited.

You can tell whether its working, and this is the second problem, if your vehicle has any wireless components on the car. For example, tire pressure monitors or sensors send a wireless signal to the ECM; it would be a nightmare to connect these sensors, which are inside the tire mounted to the wheel, with hard wire. So if your wrap of the ECM is successful and your vehicle does have tire pressure sensors, you will likely get a malfunction indication on your dash telling you the sensors are not working. This would be because the ECM is no longer receiving the signal. There may be, probably are, other wireless components on these electronics filled newer vehicles and these would also be blocked. Tire pressure sensors go back to at least 2012, that I know of, so wireless components on a car are not anything new. Many motorcycles also have these tire pressure sensors, indicating that they too, have a wireless interface in the ECM.

So by wrapping your ECM, in essence putting a Faraday cage around it, you may cause yourself car problems and if you don’t, it may be because the “cage” is not completely shielding your ECM.