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Hacking Automotive Systems
alphadogg writes "University researchers have taken a close look at the computer systems used to run today's cars and discovered new ways to hack into them, sometimes with frightening results. In a paper set to be presented at a security conference in Oakland, California, next week, the researchers say that by connecting to a standard diagnostic computer port included in late-model cars, they were able to do some nasty things, such as turning off the brakes, changing the speedometer reading, blasting hot air or music on the radio, and locking passengers in the car. The point of the research isn't to scare a nation of drivers, already made nervous by stories of software glitches, faulty brakes, and massive automotive recalls. It's to warn the car industry that it needs to keep security in mind as it develops more sophisticated automotive computer systems. Other experts describe the real-world risk of any of the described attacks as low." Here is the researchers' site, and an image that could stand as a summary of the work.
Someone with access to your unlocked car can cause it to malfunction by messing with its systems, story at 11!
Computer or no computer, if I climbed under your car in the parking lot, I could cut the brake lines.
...no matter how insecure they are, until hackers find a way to wirelessly connect to my car that doesn't have a wireless connection, I'm not going to worry.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make sure some crazy ex-girlfriend doesn't have something stuffed in my OBDII port. "Your mom's OBDII port is stuffed!" Dammit! Almost made it without the mom joke...
Living With a Nerd
It would seem to me we have a lot more to lose by auto manufacturers implement software security than to gain. Its hard enough as it is for repair shops to work on engines and electronics without adding security, which would make repairs even more proprietary and expensive. With almost nothing to gain, if someone wants to disable your brakes they can (gasp) damage your brake line without even opening your car door! Mess with your tires, exhaust, gas, etc. There are many more ways to mess with your car externally than via the software port. And yet somehow the earth keeps rotating.
I'd rather leave my port accessible- someday I may want to write some software. If someone has physically broken into my car and put something on my port, then that's my problem. Don't force DRM on us.
I love how we as geeks sometimes want it both ways. "Keep it secure! Add encryption". "Wait wait! That's DRM, I want it gone!"
I want to be able to connect diagnostic equipment to my car so that I know what's going on. I don't trust a mechanic to tell me what's wrong and how much it will cost. I like being able to do most of the work myself when possible.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Why not provide manual overrides for things like door locks and windows. Even CD drives have that little pinhole reset so you can manually pop the sucker open. It just seems ridiculous to automate everything in a device that is always going to be mechanical in nature.
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Ah. Rush Limbaugh. That would be the parsimonious explanation.
I want to know how they made the radio blow hot air.
OnStar themselves can do several things like disable your engine, track your car, open the doors, etc. I would expect that it's theoretically possible (though unlikely) that a person could hack into your car via that method. It would certainly be quite a feat of hacking, but I believe it is possible.
(((dB)))
...my decision to make my next vehicle a 1968 VW Beetle.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
You'd have to reflash the PCM (ECU is an OBD-I term; this kind of stuff is only possible with OBD-II, which actually mandates the term "PCM" — if you want to be accurate, stop calling it an ECU in this context) entirely. I imagine that this sort of functionality is available on all modern cars; possibly not all OBD-II cars, but probably anything new enough to have CAN. Most OBD-II cars on the road do not use CAN anywhere, though today a car might have three or four CAN buses; PCM to OBD-II DLC (diagnostic link connector), PCM to transmission computer, PCM to BCM (body control module) and possibly even BCM to stereo. And other models exist but I personally think buying a car with a CAN bus shared between more than two components is asking for a foot in your ass.
I happen to like my mechanical diesels, which achieve efficiencies very near to modern systems. It's only too bad International-Navistar lacked the foresight to implement the engine as a full-mechanical design, as Mercedes did; your battery can explode and the engine keeps running until you shut it off, because the shutoff is a vacuum switch on the back of the ignition lock. I've had my alternator fail completely and my battery down to about 4V in my 300SD, still made it to work. Nobody will be tampering with my DLC :D
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People have physical access to the outside of my car, it doesn't mean they can change my speedo, mileometer, fuel mixture, etc. quickly and without me realising that something has happened. They certainly can't do it just by plugging a box into the port even if they *do* break into my car... because my car is mechanical and doesn't run with this sort of shit (Note: I can and have removed the entire ECU box from a car in the past - it runs, but slowly and less efficiently and may not pass an emissions test, but it still works in a driveable condition - very modern cars literally do not work without them so they are "essential" and thus should work as bloody advertised).
All of these things were done over an ODB cable to a standardised port on every car. On every decent model of car, they should be read-only information about the car's engine. The port is standardised, commonplace, accessible from the driver's seat (by law in the EU), hidden, and (with these models) accepts almost any device / commands without question. It's standard practice to connect an OBD box to modern cars if they have an indicator light up (in fact, it's usually the ONLY way to clear such a light). My car has one. I'm pretty damn sure that you can't modify my mileage or speedo via that route, though, or my fuel mixture, or stop my brakes working. About the worst you might be able to do is clear a warning light. This is because the OBD is designed properly, doesn't allow things it doesn't and it helped by the fact that my speedo is a needle connected to a magnetic induction coil produce by a spinning cable spun at a ratio of the speed of the wheels, and my mileometer is a tick-over-style mechanical one. The Prius-scare should have shown people what happens when you take away control of a vehicle from a driver and put it in the hand of a computer - it was discussed that virtual-ignition-systems, virtual-gearing-systems, etc. are just dangerous and provide no advantage to anyone.
Nobody is saying these things are not do-able on any car with physical work, we're asking why the hell they are modifiable over such a cable in such a "simple" way that someone could literally sell a box on eBay that, when connected to a car, can fraudulently adjust mileage, turn on hot air vents, TURN OFF THE BRAKES (FFS!), and basically cause it to crash and explode whenever you want. That's *NOT* what the OBD standard is for - it's for diagnostics and diagnostic indicators. Why the hell can I adjust the hot air vent through that cable?
The problem is that there is absolutely no NEED for the speedo to be "writable" over a diagnostics cable, or anything else for that matter. The only "writable" things should be to clear diagnostic lights, which will inevitably pop up again if the problem is "real". So you can't just switch off the ABS light on a car and then sell it as having working ABS... OBD logs and records such actions in the car itself and will redisplay those indicators if there is a real problem still.
Why the hell would you *ever* want to be able to modify information like that? Why should a mechanic ever be able to adjust the mileage on the car? It's stupid, not-thought-through and terrible design. Next up is being able to open the doors of any car that has Bluetooth OBD, or changing the VIN numbers or whatever. It's just ridiculous. Even if the car is computer controlled, there are some places where access control of sorts should prevent certain actions.
Please to be shutting the fuck up and panicing people.
I WANT my car to allow me to do those things. Thats why I have an ODB-II dongle hooked up between my car and the PC thats in it ... so I can control my cars features the way I want.
Being that the ODB port is generally directly under the drivers side dash, its rather hard for someone to plug into it without it being noticed. If they've plugged into it, they've got physical access to your car, which means they can do a lot more damage than fucking up your heater and blasting you with hot air.
You said you didn't want to spread fear and panic, and you're lying, thats exactly your goal, and to use that to get attention for yourself.
This isn't anything new, its been this way for at least 10 years if not longer (I haven't tried anything on older models) maybe all the way back into the ODB-I days and probably well before that when some cars had interfaces of their own standard.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I've been "HACKING" car computers for a decade now. and a lot of other people have as well. Most hot-rodders from import tuners to vette performance guys have been hacking ECM's. Many of the honda hackers even go as far as opening up the ECM and desoldering chips to hack them. Changing the ignition timing table, fuel tables, Disable the Rev limiter, Disable Passkey for engine swaps (I do this with the GM 3800sc and it's ecm from the Buicks) add features, change a Standard ECM program to a program that understand boost for a turbo install... etc.....
Heck a friend of mine is hacking the computer that controls the new power steering system in cars so we can retrofit power steering to vehicles that dont have it.
I guess us car ECM hackers are the new "EVIL DOERS"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As a car modder, who has been doing this kind of stuff (not malicious) since the early 1990s, wow welcome to the future guys.
Just an example: When my throttle position is above 90% depressed, my A/C compressor disengages(or rather the A/C Clutch engages), giving me that little bit of horsepower and theoretically saving my compressor from 7500 RPM (engine speed, not compressor speed) redline. I did this in an afternoon using only software.
The ECU has a lot of control over the car, especially in drive by wire cars... My car happens to have a cable accelerator, and I vastly prefer that because of throttle response time (a physical link is better most of the time than a software one, assuming both are properly maintained).
If they were really trying to be malicious without being deadly, you could change the air/fuel ratio to be really lean and burn up the valve train the first time they hit the gas pedal, there is no physical override for that, not like brake pedals (which if you turn it off it merely removes the power assist and only prevents you from stopping the car if you aren't strong enough to push the pedal down.)
OBD II is all well and good for basic emissions/driveability/MIL diagnostics, but adding security to the other functions, such as the door locks, windows, etc. could basically kill the aftermarket alarm/remote start business.
On many (if not most) cars these days, many of the basic functions such as door locks are controlled via a CAN bus (a 2-wire twisted pair network) and more and more functions are migrating to network control rather than having dedicated wiring. In my car, everything other than the lights and the radio is run over CAN (even the seat adjustments and the rear window defogger).
Take, for example, installing an aftermarket stereo: Many new cars don't have a wire that supplies 12V when you turn the key on to turn on the radio, the radio is always powered and listens to the CAN bus for the command from the car's BCM (body control module) to turn itself on. On these cars, a separate aftermarket module has to be installed to turn the radio on (or the installer has to dig around in the car to find something else that only turns on with the key, like a power outlet). There are also aftermarket modules that can translate the CAN bus commands from the car's factory steering wheel controls to control an aftermarket stereo.
Adding a layer of security (presumably encryption or authentication) could cripple these abilities with aftermarket equipment.
Don't believe me, well take the example of remote start on my current car a 1999 (yes, 12 model years old now) Mercedes Benz. I have installed 3 remote start systems on various cars (a Subaru, a Honda, and a Mazda) which were what I'd call conventionally-wired cars, having accessible wires to turn the ignition and engine computer on and start the car. Easy. Cost, under $100 for all the parts including extra relays to turn on accessories and such.
On my '99 M-B, the engine computer will not allow the engine to run unless it can maintain a constant 2-way conversation over a separate CAN bus between itself and the EIS. What's the EIS? It's the Electronic Ignition Switch. Here's where things get complicated. M-B cars don't use conventional keys any more, the use a "SmartKey", which is an electronic key fob thing that inserts like a key, but has an infrared emitter-receiver in the end. The EIS supplies power to the SmartKey via an inductive coil around the key opening. The EIS and the SmartKey then engage via infrared in a continuous encrypted conversation which authorized the EIS to tell the engine computer to let the engine run. Because you need to have the SmartKey in place, it has been impossible to install a remote start system.
Recently, a remote start system became available for my car (sold new 12 model years ago, remember), which will simulate the EIS' conversation with the SmartKey and allow the factory remote's Panic alarm button to be repurposed to start the car (the SmartKey is also the remote, but don't worry about that, it's actually two devices in one package). Cost: $1000. That's over ten times the cost of a remote start system for a regular car. And it took 12 years to develop.
All because of a single encrypted function. Admittedly, a really well designed one that makes the car impossible to hotwire, but you can see what problems might face the aftermarket if things like door lock controls became encrypted.
All in all, this research exercise is just stupid. Of course you can make a complicated system do silly things if you have physical access to it. I don't see the point of adding encryption to it when the aftermarket will have to figure out how to bypass it eventually anyway.
Off topic, but in case anyone's interested, you can have up to 24 SmartKeys issued for an M-B vehicle, but I think only eight can be active at one time. The service information talks about having three ranks of eight keys. Once you need to replace the key for the 24th time, you need to replace the EIS, the engine computer and a couple of other items. SmartKeys can only be ordered at a dealer and you h
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