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Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

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Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#31

Post by librick »

bdavbdav wrote: post #24
ignormies wrote: post #3

Cool project! How much time have you spent sitting in your car with a laptop, or did you excise the headunit from the car?

This is the issue I always have with car interface hacking - its uncomfortable and batteries suffer!

Yea if I get more into the hardware hacking side of things, it'd be great if I could add a wire harness to be able to connect external power to the headunit/disconnect it from the car battery. I never had to fully disconnect battery terminals or anything but I had some scares with slow reboot times. I also want to look into LoRa or similar wireless tech to be able to send terminal commands to the car from my desk

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#32

Post by librick »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #23
Dalewyn wrote: post #2

>2021 Honda Civic >2012 software and hardware Oy vey.

The 10th gen Civic ran from 2016-2022 with the same infotainment setup. So it's a 2016 car with 2012 software. That's very reasonable. And the benefit to that is that it's easy to hack since there's an RCE in the old browser. So you can jailbreak your own car. (It doesn't have a cellular data connection so it's not a security risk)

Addressing "(It doesn't have a cellular data connection so it's not a security risk)" - I wouldn't say it's not a security risk. Check out the Bluetooth docs in the repo for example. Cellular data is only one interface out of many others (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, CAN, XM radio, HD radio). Jailbreaking anything isn't without its risks.

Further, I agree that it's reasonable to ship a 2016 car with 2012 software. But I've seen no evidence that these headunits have gotten security updates within that timeframe. Think of it like a smartphone. I can make do with a phone that's a few years old, but I have an expectation that it will receive timely security updates. In the case of the Honda headunits, they run Android. They should receive Android security patches (I'll admit there's certainly complexity there, Google has long struggled with the tradeoff between device security and AOSP ubiquity). There's nothing wrong with using an older version of Android or an LTS kernel, but it should still receive security patches.

Last year, some Mazda cars were accidentally bricked by a radio station broadcast omitting file extensions: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/02/radio-station-snafu-in-.... That was an accident, not the work of a malicious actor.

Consider Stagefright bugs. As I understand it, although it was published in 2015, it affected several earlier Android versions, including 4.2.2. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagefright_(bug). As far as I know, my car was never patched against Stagefright bugs. All it takes is a bug in one library (such as for HD radio image processing) and a well-published Android for something like this to be a big problem.

It's complicated; I like jailbreaking. I also think Honda should ship higher-quality software with better security policies and update guarantees

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#33

Post by librick »

hparadiz wrote: post #9
expertentipp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awww nostalgia hits... some very very long time ago I was working on software tested on KitKat. It's better not to mention it during interviews otherwise will be dismissed as a dinosaur.

I have it on my 2020 civic and at least it doesn't lag. Problem with newer builds is the inevitable creep of increased CPU and memory usage until eventually perfectly good hardware is no longer able to run anything.

Yea I tend to have pretty high memory usage, including when I was running close to stock (i.e., before installing a bunch of third-party apps). My model didn't come with a built-in GPS app, but I was told that the next trim up/more expensive model did. I think more expensive trims came with headunits with more RAM (I think 4GB?) but I can't confirm. It'd be great to see a PR from someone with better hardware to see the actual headunit differences between trims

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#34

Post by librick »

dom96 wrote: post #10
hparadiz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have it on my 2020 civic and at least it doesn't lag. Problem with newer builds is the inevitable creep of increased CPU and memory usage until eventually perfectly good hardware is no longer able to run anything.

yep, I also have a 2020 Civic and the software actually is alright, though perhaps my expectations were set really low by the amount of hate I read about the software online. But hey, it supports CarPlay just fine (although does have some weird graphical artifacts sometimes) and the screen is responsive enough which is all that I really want.

I can't speak to CarPlay but yea I'll say the headunit software is certainly usable. One of the reasons I started this project was because I admire the engineering involved. I wish they would've shipped wireless Android Auto though. My car only works with wired Android Auto. It was only a minor inconvenience until I broke a USB-C cable. I rely on my car, I didn't need a failure point in my navigation. I ended up buying an adapter (the Motorola MA1) that lets me use Android Auto wirelessly (the MA1 worked okay, I had a few issues where it would randomly reboot but one day that stopped and I still don't know why; it's finicky). It just seems absurd to have a whole separate hardware/software stack in the form of an adapter just because Honda couldn't use a newer Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#35

Post by librick »

mianos wrote: post #11
mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Par for the course in automotive. Once something works, it is not getting modified unless bugs appear.

Or, as for the Subaru Starlink head-unit, even if it is so buggy and crashes all the time, once the car is out the dealer's door, there is nothing the consumer can do. Even class actions don't mean they would be recalled or even fixed. They did offer a discount on a new car.

TLDR; Kia rant: Yea it's bizarre to me how recalls aren't more widespread. The fiasco with Kia cars getting broken into is my favorite recent example. Teenagers break into random stranger's Kias and go on joyrides. Then local news channels and police sensationalize Kia car break-ins or villify bored teenagers. It seems like very few people actually demand recalls by Kia. A car that can be unlocked in the span of a TikTok video is a dangerous car; it's a public safety issue. I'm mostly ignorant of the recall process, but it seems like they should be more widespread than they are

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#36

Post by mschuster91 »

librick wrote: post #35
mianos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, as for the Subaru Starlink head-unit, even if it is so buggy and crashes all the time, once the car is out the dealer's door, there is nothing the consumer can do. Even class actions don't mean they would be recalled or even fixed. They did offer a discount on a new car.

TLDR; Kia rant: Yea it's bizarre to me how recalls aren't more widespread. The fiasco with Kia cars getting broken into is my favorite recent example. Teenagers break into random stranger's Kias and go on joyrides. Then local news channels and police sensationalize Kia car break-ins or villify bored teenagers. It seems like very few people actually demand recalls by Kia. A car that can be unlocked in the span of a Ti…

> I'm mostly ignorant of the recall process, but it seems like they should be more widespread than they are

Fully agree. The reason is, it's easier (and fits into more popular narratives) to blame Tiktok and Youtube than to hold large corporations accountable.

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#37

Post by hparadiz »

librick wrote: post #33
hparadiz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have it on my 2020 civic and at least it doesn't lag. Problem with newer builds is the inevitable creep of increased CPU and memory usage until eventually perfectly good hardware is no longer able to run anything.

Yea I tend to have pretty high memory usage, including when I was running close to stock (i.e., before installing a bunch of third-party apps). My model didn't come with a built-in GPS app, but I was told that the next trim up/more expensive model did. I think more expensive trims came with headunits with more RAM (I think 4GB?) but I can't confirm. It'd be great to see a PR from someone with better hardware to see t…

I'll check mine. I have the Sport Touring so it's the top trim below the Type R with built in GPS but I never actually use the GPS cause my phone's is better.

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#38

Post by causi »

canbus wrote: post #19
causi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have serious doubt there were any tablets shipping with Android 4 that used a resistive screen. At least not any that didn't come from some no-name manufacturer for eighty bucks.

i'm probably thinking a bit older. I had an "Arnova 10G2"[0] tablet back in the day which had a resistive screen! [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Archos-Arnova-10b-G2-Ta...

Poor Archos. Went from making some of the earliest, coolest portable media players on the market to the worst android devices.

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#39

Post by expertentipp »

at_a_remove wrote: post #26

I have a Toyota RAV4, about 2016, with the built-in system. It's silly amounts of awful when it comes to bad UX. Enough so that I am considering buying a head unit. Bafflingly, I can't find head units that recognize and obey MP3 playlists. I would have thought that functionality would be a given.

> units that recognize and obey MP3 playlists

My limited experience says it's mostly about lengths of filenames, non alphabetic characters in filenames, and nested directories. Try flat directory structure and maybe random filenames of 6-8 characters. Simply one more obfuscation step before feeding it into a car system. If lucky, the system might read correctly the ID3 tags.

Re: Show HN: Honda Civic Infotainment Reverse-Engineering

#40

Post by itsmartapuntocm »

librick wrote: post #30
ignormies wrote: post #3

Cool project! How much time have you spent sitting in your car with a laptop, or did you excise the headunit from the car?

Thanks :) My friends and I have made a few jokes about hacking my literal "daily driver". TLDR; didn't excise, mostly sat in my car. I originally rooted the car using Honda Hack via http://www.autohack.org/ . A paid service that afaik uses a webkit exploit and probably an old Android kernel exploit to gain root. Part of the motivation for this project was to encourage others to release open-source rooting tools so th…

I also paid for Honda Hack. I'm curious if you have the same issue as I where once I rooted with Honda Hack, Carplay seems to be extremely buggy where it often doesn't work without several reboots and/or stopping/starting the car. Haven't been able to pinpoint why this is other than the extra features are just bogging down the ancient hardware to a point that it's destabilizing.
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