An Australian security researcher managed to run Doom on a John Deere tractor. The demonstration took place at the DEFCON 30 hacking conference and is seen as a victory for the right to repair, as the agricultural machinery giant has been one of the most active manufacturers against the right.

Doom ushered in the era of third-person shooters and is considered the most ported game in history. There are countless platforms and devices where you can play, some are truly unthinkable. And why not on a tractor?

Australian researcher Sick Codes focused on studying agricultural machinery. A segment that almost no hacker has touched and that, like every device today, has its electronics. The goal wasn’t so much to run Doom as much demonstrate their vulnerability through a jailbreak help users freely repair and upgrade their machinery because John Deere has implemented blocks at the software level that allow only authorized dealers to do this work.

It’s an anti-right-to-repair practice that computer users are unfortunately well-acquainted with, and which some governments are finally trying to curtail with laws that help fight current industry practices and planned technological obsolescence that drive continued consumerism and every accelerated production of products (and their subsequent technological waste) instead of improving their lifetime.

Doom on a John Deere tractor

The researcher worked on touch screen controllers of some John Deere tractor models with ARM NXP I.MX 6 architecture chips and Wind River Linux 8 and Windows CE operating systems. Nothing in the code was properly encrypted and all the firmware code ran as root.

This made the task easier, and together with the developer of the Doom mod, he managed to launch a classic with a cornfield theme and a rather curious steering wheel as a weapon controller.

Kyle Wiens, CEO of repair website iFixit and advocate for the right to repair, attended the presentation and recounted his experience twitter thread: “Sick Codes unlocked by John Deere and this is just the beginning… It turns out that our entire catering system is based on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware.«.

That said, after dozens of lawsuits against John Deere and bills in the U.S. Senate, the company said it would make previously limited technical resources available to customers and independent repairers. I’m sure the guys at iD Software didn’t expect their game to run on a tractor, but if you help with the right to fix it, you’re welcome.