Some awesome analysis. I need to get wireshark for CAN :-)
Its amazing to me to have seen the transformation of cars from things that were primarily mechanically controlled to ones that are primarily software + actuators controlled. A lot more ways to fail. No doubt at some point 'high speed' chases will no longer be possible when the cops send an SMS to your car telling it to pull over.
It's amazing how much code goes into all of the microcontrollers and processors in a modern car. An IEEE article from a couple years ago cited that a modern luxury car may have 100M+ lines of code controlling it, vs 5.7M for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft (loc is not a great metric, but still...).[1] The jet plane software is no doubt subjected to more security scrutiny, but even if cars had the same code quality it seems like there would be at least a few vulnerabilities in those 100M lines.
Also, if you're curious about interacting with CAN there are a number of hobbyist transceivers out there[2], or to simply listen a logic analyzer would do the job[3].
A luxury car that has 100M+ lines of code is probably running quite a large Linux installation for Infotainment. You don't get that amount of code just for the control software.
Thanks for that link, I guess the days of cutting the brake fluid lines are gone, these days a modern wise guy would just connect up a device to tell the brakes to stop working when the conditions were right (high speed, up coming curve/cliff etc.) I expect to see this in the next Bond film.
I find those software contolled cars very dangerous. I posted a question about them being used as murder weapons [1] 9 months ago, but nobody was interested. And today we have this [2] discussion about the strange car crash resulting the death of Michael Hastings.
For the past few years I've been happily envisioning us all being chauffeured around in robot-driven cars preferably before my 2 year old is 16... imagining they must be safer. And, I still think that generally, auto-automobiles would be safer. Then I thought more about Michael Hastings (whose murder I incidentally nearly witnessed, traveling down Highland about 10 min after the crash, I could see cops, crashed car, and was diverted onto Melrose)... anyway - that, and then the murderous rampage at Venice Beach over the weekend... I thought - oh GOD! People are totally going to remote control cars as murder weapons. OBVIOUSLY. Ugh.
As far as a vehicle being used as a weapon goes, your comment may have felt a bit far-fetched at the time. Now that we know how low the bar is set for government action on citizens domestically, your comment has a much stronger context.
Not to be confused with the forthcoming paper from Birmingham's Flavio Garcia & Dutch researchers Baris Ege & Roel Verdult. That paper focuses on Volkswagen brands, including Porsche and Bentley. source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/30/car-hackin...
If you have physical access to the car to the extend that you are able to talk to the CAN bus, you could as well cut the brake fluid lines, corrupt the tires so they explode when they get hot and the pressure rises, put poison in the air conditioner or whatever. Sure, fiddling with the electronics gives you more creative ways to do harm, but the assumption that you have physical access to the can is a very strong one. Furthermore, some cars have multiple buses, with the more critical ones being harder to access.
A lot of people are negative about all the electronics, but there is a reason there are all there. The electronics allow you to have engines that are three times more powerful than those of 15 years ago and in the same time consume only half as much fuel. The electronics allow you to measure and control everything much more precisely.
Also electronics allow you to implement security systems like ABS, ESP and so one which are really helpful (ABS saved me several times!).
Talking about security of the CAN - one should think that adding more security means that more powerful ECUs will be required, which means more weight and more power consumption, which means more fuel consumption. Is it worth it?
One more point for the security - critical ECUs that control steering, brakes, airbags and so on are required to get the corresponding ASIL (Automotive Safety Integrity Level) certificates which require a lot of testing and sometimes redundant sensors (similar to those for airplanes). So it is not that simple for a ECU to send some false messages on the bus.
"Talking about security of the CAN - one should think that adding more security means that more powerful ECUs will be required, which means more weight and more power consumption, which means more fuel consumption. Is it worth it?"
Seriously? Even if we added high end embedded processors (e.g. 1 GHz ARM) it would hardly be noticeably in the car's total weight. Of course automotive manufacturers will need to think more about security. CAN is a pretty crappy protocol to start with (security wise at least) ...
I know it sounds absurd, but it really is like this. Typical car ECUs have about 40-50 MHz processors and there are about 70 ECUs in a modern car. Imagine switching them all to 1GHz ARM cores - how much more expensive it will be and how much more space you will need. You will also most probably need bigger PCBs and cooling and there comes the additional weight.
Also the CAN protocol may be crappy for development, but allows for more simple hardware design (connectors, wires etc), which again saves weight. The cables in a modern car weigh about 50 kg so imagine doubling that in order to use a better protocol - this would be like always driving with one more passenger.
Such things may look small, but they quickly add up...
Also, google "Boston Brakes Michael Hastings" and you'll find a lot of speculation along these lines with a lot of significant support for the idea. Strikes me that a top result was an article from the Atlantic about how the FBI doesn't buy this "conspiracy theory" - but what if the "big story" Hastings was talking about being onto right before he was killed was the one that just came out about the FBI + DEA spying on people. Hrmmm.
Its amazing to me to have seen the transformation of cars from things that were primarily mechanically controlled to ones that are primarily software + actuators controlled. A lot more ways to fail. No doubt at some point 'high speed' chases will no longer be possible when the cops send an SMS to your car telling it to pull over.