Car hacking really came to light in 2015. We saw Jeeps getting attacked over the air, BMWs being remotely unlocked, and attacks on Tesla’s Model S. Yes, today’s cars are computers, and they going to have vulnerabilities. While cars have had in-vehicle networking for the last 25 years, only recently have we seen public attacks on the systems. This is in part due to a lack of tools for interacting with the networks and protocols used within vehicles. CANtact aims to bring these tools to the public. It consists of an open source hardware device for connecting any PC to a vehicle CAN bus, and an open source software tool for inspecting and exploiting the controllers within vehicles.
This talk will provide an overview of the CANtact project, present the software and hardware tools, show what vehicle messaging looks like, and present practical examples of reverse engineering real world systems. We’ll try to get you up to speed with all the knowledge you need to start hacking today’s automotive systems, and touch on what the future of automotive security holds.
Eric Evenchick is an embedded systems developer with a focus on security and automotive systems. While studying electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, he worked with their Alternative Fuels Team to design and build a hydrogen electric vehicle for the EcoCAR Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition. Eric previously worked at Faraday Future as a Vehicle Security Architect. He is currently a Director at Linklayer Labs and is a contributor to Hackaday.com. He does not own a car.