> ECUs are connected together [...] doesn’t hear from another ECU it needs to talk to [...] lighting control ECU
This is very unusual terminology. Most vehicles have exactly 1 ECU (occasionally 2, and addresses are allocated for ~4 depending on the gateway) which controls exclusively the engine parameters. The lights, the HVAC, the ABS, etc. are all other modules (nodes on the network) which go by names other than ECU. For example, TCU for the transmission.
Any module can throw a DTC, but only a DTC from the ECU will illuminate the MIL (check engine light).
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...
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. :/
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.
(2023)
Some more discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35452963
> ...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.
Back when cars had hardly any anti-theft mechanism, we'd put hidden toggle switch(es) that'd cut off the fuel pump and other stuff. In the 90s we'd get fancier and use (in addition to hidden toggle switch(es)) stuff like custom made transponder thinggies: we'd have a female port installed on the dashboard and the corresponding male "jack" on our keychain. These took a few hours to install and would shut some wires at different points.
They were "dumb" in a way (it was obvious looking at the dashboard that a car had such a system installed) but not easy to remove: you had to follow the wiring for a long time to find where the various cut-off points where installed.
Funnily enough after 30 years or so many of these transponders (?) start failing and it's a very common cause of youngtimer cars being stuck on the side of the road. While a dumb hidden toggle switch shall pretty much work forever (but is easier to neutralize as you only need to find the switch).
A toggle switch is literally less than $5 and trivially installed.
For added fun you can also add stuff directly on the fuses: they're easier to find but there are more advanced kits (for example you plug it on an important fuse and then you've got a remote on your keychain to "unlock" the mechanism).
I mean: yup, you can look into cryptography and install this and that software countermeasure.
Or, you, know, you can install (or have installed) a $5 toggle switch.
P.S: this made me think... I'll probably install a fake toggle switch, obvious to be found, linked to the highest non legal alarm I can find on alibaba. So if anyone tries to steal the car, he'll toggle the switch and trigger the alarm. That's dumb as heck and yet may work just fine.
(2023)
Also it really needs capitalization of the first word. CAN is an acronym. Otherwise the title is quite funny.
> 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.