Hacking Siri to Start Your Car

Chris Velazco reporting – New Siri Hack Will Start Your Car:

While Apple’s engineers toil away deep in the heart of their Cupertino headquarters, developers have taken it upon themselves to make Siri even more impressive than usual. Forget about setting reminders and checking the weather — with a little bit of know-how (and a homebrew proxy server), Siri can start your car for you.

Developer Brandon Fiquett is behind this little hack, and boy what a hack it is. Building off the same Siri Proxy server that allowed @plamoni to control a thermostat over WiFi, Fiquett created a plugin that interacts with a PHP script that lives on his own webserver. That PHP script allows Fiquett to send commands to any (registered) car with a Viper SmartStart system, which in this case means his silver Acura TL.

The end result is just as impressive as it sounds: when asked, Siri can fire up his Acura’s engine, pop its trunk, lock the doors, and trigger the car’s alarms (not that anyone really pays attention to them).