Lots of manufacturers are going to encrypted CAN to prevent these sorts of injection attacks. Of course it also makes life far more difficult for third party part suppliers. :/
> lights are smart, and include things like motors to level the headlights (so when the car is loaded with heavy luggage, the lights are turned to compensate), steering headlights to illuminate the corners, to automatically detect if the lights have failed, to turn on pumps to spray water on the lights, and so on.
There is no way all that crap can be worth the reliability cost or even the weight...
If you have a Stellantis product make sure to get the key lockdown flash done. If not thieves can just program a new key to your car and drive off with it in under a minute (My car was stolen twice this way). Initially the flash was only available for Challengers and Chargers which made Trackhawk's and TRX's even more of a target.
I’d say this rates as “midrange” in terms of car theft difficulty. Some cars (very new American and nearly all European cars) use some form of cryptography to authenticate that immobilizer messages came from a module which posses an immobilizer secret, so simple message injection won’t work like this.
Others (older cars, famous US market Kias) have no immobilizer at all and not even this level of sophistication is necessary.
Yeah almost all Euro cars have had strong cryptography immobilizers since the mid to late 90s. It’s pretty shocking how secure those early systems are - to this day car enthusiasts cannot find any weaknesses or bypasses other than flashing the ECU firmware to remove the immobilizer code. A lot of people would rather not have that feature anymore on a 25 year old beater where replacement keys might cost as much as the whole car is worth.
I admittedly haven't finished reading the whole write up - I am surprised that neither you nor Ian suspected that the "vandals" were on to something a bit more worth the risk, being in Security and tech in general. Just saying - I'm not in either field but once I see those wires, I'm already thinking.. then a second time and I'm hiding my vehicle, somehow, ASAP.
It occurs to me that the power locks in my car are broken, and only the driver's one works properly. So, I'm three quarters of the way to an attack mitigation!
Lots of manufacturers are going to encrypted CAN to prevent these sorts of injection attacks. Of course it also makes life far more difficult for third party part suppliers. :/
> lights are smart, and include things like motors to level the headlights (so when the car is loaded with heavy luggage, the lights are turned to compensate), steering headlights to illuminate the corners, to automatically detect if the lights have failed, to turn on pumps to spray water on the lights, and so on.
There is no way all that crap can be worth the reliability cost or even the weight...
It's not worth it. It's also why cars are absurdly expensive these days, not due to part cost, but due to testing and reliability costs.
And of course, everything is a new hack entry.
If you have a Stellantis product make sure to get the key lockdown flash done. If not thieves can just program a new key to your car and drive off with it in under a minute (My car was stolen twice this way). Initially the flash was only available for Challengers and Chargers which made Trackhawk's and TRX's even more of a target.
https://media.stellantisnorthamerica.com/newsrelease.do?id=2...
(2023)
Some more discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963
I’d say this rates as “midrange” in terms of car theft difficulty. Some cars (very new American and nearly all European cars) use some form of cryptography to authenticate that immobilizer messages came from a module which posses an immobilizer secret, so simple message injection won’t work like this.
Others (older cars, famous US market Kias) have no immobilizer at all and not even this level of sophistication is necessary.
Yeah almost all Euro cars have had strong cryptography immobilizers since the mid to late 90s. It’s pretty shocking how secure those early systems are - to this day car enthusiasts cannot find any weaknesses or bypasses other than flashing the ECU firmware to remove the immobilizer code. A lot of people would rather not have that feature anymore on a 25 year old beater where replacement keys might cost as much as the whole car is worth.
> ...and because noise from an (airport) radar sweep is never going to look like a proper CAN frame, there is no spurious wake-up.
Next up on HN: "Expensive cars being stolen with cheap microwave ovens"
I admittedly haven't finished reading the whole write up - I am surprised that neither you nor Ian suspected that the "vandals" were on to something a bit more worth the risk, being in Security and tech in general. Just saying - I'm not in either field but once I see those wires, I'm already thinking.. then a second time and I'm hiding my vehicle, somehow, ASAP.
Good read so far, thank you.
It occurs to me that the power locks in my car are broken, and only the driver's one works properly. So, I'm three quarters of the way to an attack mitigation!
My 1995 Miata doesn't even care/know whether the seatbelts are fastened or not, ha ha.
(2023)
Also it really needs capitalization of the first word. CAN is an acronym. Otherwise the title is quite funny.