The greatest legacy left by humanity for alien archaeologists to find in the aeons to come will be millions of random devices running id Software’s pioneering FPS Doom. The latest such piece of kit is the display from a John Deere tractor, jailbroken and fragging away at demons at this past weekend’s DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas. The tractor computer was hacked by Sick Codes, who’s trying to draw attention to farming equipment manufacturers who lock down their products to prevent owners from repairing them.
“Liberate the tractors!” Sick Codes told Wired. “We want farmers to be able to repair their stuff for when things go wrong,” he added, “and now that means being able to repair or make decisions about the software in their tractors.” Sick Codes focused on a couple of different tractor models in his efforts to jailbreak their touchscreen circuit boards, which took months. Although the hack needed physical access to work, Sick Codes thinks it could be made easier by developing a tool to target the specific vulnerabilities he used to gain root access.
The jailbroken tractor runs DeHacked Doom, which Sick Codes teamed up with New Zealand-based modder Skelegant to get running. You can go after pigs on the farm and need to harvest corn for health. Take a look at the agriculture-themed version of Doom played on the John Deere display below:
Playing Doom on a John Deere tractor display (jailbroken/rooted) at @defcon pic.twitter.com/ih0QUTGNuS
— Sick.Codes (@sickcodes) August 14, 2022
This isn’t the only weird thing we’ve spotted Doom running on before. Back in 2020, Lauren reported on the classic shooter making its way to Nintendo’s old-school Game & Watch handheld. Alice O. found possibly one of the oddest places you could find Doom though – a pregnancy test. Check out the It Runs Doom Tumblr for more unusual instances of FPS shenanigans.