CAR & Automobile Hacking MASTERCLASS - 2025

Outline prerequisites for researching automobile security and vehicle automation, and guide learners to use Linux basics and test bench demos for hands-on exploration.

Explore attack surfaces of the inveigle infotainment system, including USB ports, multimedia, third-party apps, and wireless interfaces, to identify vulnerabilities and prevent exploit paths.

Explore attack scenarios targeting car systems, from steering and braking to speed control and telematics, GPS, and collision and airbag safety, to understand dangerous tampering.

Explore how the car’s ignition uses a key transponder and RF verification to permit starting, while noting the near-field attack surface enables denial-of-service risks if proximity breaches occur.

Examine the tire pressure monitoring system (tpms) in modern cars, including sensors, the smart junction box, and low-power radio signals, and discuss how attackers might mimic a tire problem.

Explore how keyless entry systems transmit encrypted radio signals from a key fob and how attackers can cause denial of service by disabling or cloning signals to unlock the car.

Explore how key fob hacking exploits car access vulnerabilities through denial-of-service jamming and signal replay attacks, detailing 433.6 MHz communications, phase-shift keying, and rolling-code challenges.

Investigate the Bluetooth attack surface in cars, where the infotainment system communicates with the ecu via an api module, exposing denial of service and man in the middle risks.

Explore the telematics attack surfaces in cars, from the audio control module managing audio data to instrument cluster and infotainment, and how cellular, Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth create attack vectors.

Explore automotive infotainment data storage with NAND flash, bootloaders, and key file systems. See how system binaries, config files, NTFS, and media cards enable maps, cloud audio, and web access.

Explore attacks on car infotainment systems, identify vulnerabilities, and explain how gateways isolate safety-critical components from in-vehicle infotainment system, while noting Android Auto and smart operating systems in modern vehicles.

Explore the Inveigle infotainment system, featuring multimedia playback, Bluetooth calls, maps navigation via maps API, traffic updates, social media notifications, and a voice assistant, noting increasing vulnerability with more features.

Identify attack surfaces and vulnerabilities in the car network, where ECUs control brakes, locks, seatbelts, cameras, and parking sensors, and connect to GPS and Android Auto.

Explore how the CAN bus enables message-based communication among vehicle microcontrollers and devices, including the OBD port, CAN high and CAN low lines, and power and ground for fault diagnosis.

Explore the local interconnect network (lin) protocol, a single-master, multiple-slaves bus for low-priority vehicle functions like climate control and seating, using a single wire and 15-byte commands.

Dissect the CAN frame, covering the start of frame, identifier, rtr, data length code, data field, and crc, and explain arbitration id and high-speed versus low-speed can priority.

Explore the MOST protocol used in vehicle infotainment, its optical fibre implementation, and high data rate of 150 MBBS, along with point-to-point and star topologies and security implications.

Explore the FlexRay high-speed automotive bus for fault-tolerant brake and steer-by-wire communication, with single or dual-channel, star or hybrid topologies, and speeds up to 10 MB/s.

Learn SocketCAN on Linux to monitor, sniff, and send can packets using can-utils tools such as can-sniffer, candump, and cansend, with Wireshark and the instrument cluster simulator.

Set up a virtual can interface to enable communication between the guard and a car simulation on Linux. Load kernel modules and verify the interface is running with ip link.

Learn to use a car simulator with a dashboard and controller to practice can bus data, run by cloning the repo, and control acceleration, brakes, indicators, and doors via keyboard.

Analyze can packets by splitting time frames into halves, replaying halves to map which frames unlock or lock doors, and automate the workflow with scripting to identify responsible signals.

Analyze CAN bus packets with can-dump and Wireshark to capture, log, and inspect frames. Set up interfaces, generate dummy data, and interpret frame identifiers and payloads.

Learn to use the can sniffer to sniff CAN packets, generate a virtual interface, and identify frames that change in car CAN traffic.

Log can traffic with candump to capture frames and save auto-generated log files with a date postfix for easy review.

Learn how a replay attack leverages logged CAN frames using CANPLAYER to recreate driver actions such as braking or signaling, exposing vulnerabilities in automotive CAN networks.

Explore sending custom can frames with cansend, interfacing with a can bus, and modifying payload data using function-driven logic, illustrated with dummy data.

Learn to fuzz CAN packets in a real car by setting up virtual CAN interfaces, using candump and can sniff, and building watch lists with filters to track changing frames.

Learn to use Wireshark to sniff and log CAN bus traffic, view frames on interfaces, inspect arbitration IDs and data fields, save captures, and replay attacks with the available tooling.

Learn to capture CAN bus traffic, log it to a file with colorized output and hex-to-ascii conversion, and replay the recorded sequence on a vehicle CAN bus.

Master sending custom can frames in a real car using can flow to replay captured can data and alter arbitration IDs to trigger indicators, brakes, doors, or wipers.

Learn to use the metasploit framework to discover automotive modules, connect a car via hardware bridges and serial interfaces, and probe vehicle data with module-driven fuzzing and diagnostics.

Mitigate automotive system risk by implementing secure USB handling, official app sources, and secure updates. Strengthen remote connections and wireless configurations, disable unused Bluetooth profiles, and monitor invalid attempts.

Conclude your journey in security and ethical hacking by embracing ongoing research, joining conferences, and advancing Android penetration testing with shared resources and expert guidance.