The Car Hacking Handbook: A Guide for the Penetration Tester

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One of his first car hacks, back when the extent of car hacking was modifying an ECU, was a complete teardown of the navigation system in his 2009 Civic. Kept clearing the code until it took a break, then waited a few days and took it through inspection. Both were discussed by Craig Smith and Erik Evenchick during their talk on Car Hacking tools at Hope XI. It begins by examining vulnerabilities and providing detailed explanations of communications over the CAN bus and between devices and systems.

Hacking Connected Carsdeconstructs the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used to hack into connected cars and autonomous vehicles to help you identify and mitigate vulnerabilities affecting cyber-physical vehicles. Charlie Miller’s exploit is simply awesome, and George Hotz’ self-driving car is easily several PhD theses, but test tracks exist. It will allow you to see what the “check engine” light (MIL) is complaining about, and to clear the fault codes. The oil life indicator wasn’t reset, which means every time I turn my car on, I’ll have to press a button to clear an ominous glowing warning on my dash. Yes, the self-made self-driving car worked as intended, but George did put a relatively untested system on the open road, with idiots texting and driving in the next lane.For my car, resetting the oil life indicator is a simple fix – I just need to push the button on the dash until the oil life indicator starts to blink, release, then hold it again for ten seconds. No, vehicle exploits done in a controlled, non-public environment are not the most widely reported – that’s just a function of how much attention illegal and unethical vehicle exploits receive. I had a faulty sensor that would trigger the code for a while, then go for weeks without triggering it (CATALYST EFFICIENCY BELOW THRESHOLD).

But vehicle technologies haven’t kept pace with today’s more hostile security environment, leaving ­millions vulnerable to attack. This, in turn, allows monitors to operate and detect potential malfunctions of your cars’s emission system.The chapter begins with the sub-heading, ‘Analyzing Circuit Boards’, with the simple instruction, “When reversing a circuit board, first look at the model number of the microcontroller chips on the board. Decelerate (const down) to 30 km/h (20 mph) without braking or depressing the clutch for manual transmissions. The pair made a great joint presentation; both were charismatic, using wit to navigate through the hardware, software, techniques, and goals you want to have in mind to jump into car hacking. There’s depth and breadth to Craig’s knowledge, a necessity when it comes to reverse engineering a car.