Tractor Hack: Farmers are harnessing hacked software for John Deere repairs

Today, if you’re a farmer in the heartland of America who wants to keep planting it, growing it and harvesting it with the help of your trusty tractor, nothing is simple anymore — especially if your tractor breaks down. That’s when your new best friend may turn out to be a shadowy software hacker living in the Ukraine. A thriving crop of black-market hackers in Europe is creating and selling software hacks to John Deere software, which local mechanics in America’s breadbasket are downloading and using to repair the company’s tractors. Nebraska is one of eight states that are considering right-to-repair legislation that would invalidate John Deere's license agreement, which also prevents farmers from suing for "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment … arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software." John Deere, predictably, is opposing such legislation.