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Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

blog.willemmelching.nl

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Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#121

Post by evdoks »

phkahler wrote: post #95

>> Only try this on an actual car if you know what you’re doing. Even though only two very small patches are made to the model specific calibration values, making changes to your EPS might have unintended consequences. The author has no idea what he's doing, or more specifically what hazards might be lurking right under his nose. I worked in EPS for 6 years and it's all really cool stuff right up until you download c…

I think you are a little bit too harsh here. The author is one of the leading developers at Comma.ai - the company behind OpenPilot. I am closely following the project and regardless of what is your attitude towards OpenPilot, the author is definitely not someone, who jumps into EPS hacking without being aware of implications of his actions.

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#122

Post by grishka »

trulyme wrote: post #119
grishka wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you can't disable these network interfaces one way or another. And of course it'll still work without this connectivity.

For now. Like web pages used to work if you disabled JavaScript.

This is different. Cars could potentially be driven far away from civilization, so their reliability is sometimes critical for their occupants' survival. A car can't disable itself and leave people stranded in the middle of nowhere just because it doesn't have a cellular signal to phone home.

And btw, many web pages do still work if you disable js. I'm saying that as someone who routinely disables js for websites that abuse it.

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#123

Post by rzzzt »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #100
birken wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The driver is always responsible for what their vehicle does. As long as the driver can override the steering (which they can), then there is really nothing to be concerned about. This is the same for cars using openpilot, or Tesla's self driving systems or any other steering assistance features.

> As long as the driver can override the steering (which they can) EPS is much more powerful than humans. It can apply huge torque and cause incredibly fast acceleration of the steering wheel (from full lock on one side to the other in a split second). Messing with the firmware definitely could cause a situation where the car just does whatever it wants to and the driver can do nothing about it.

The steering rack is probably toast in this video, but the "unloaded" maximum speed is still impressive: https://youtu.be/L6-nJSCmo1c

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#124

Post by [deleted] »

phkahler wrote: post #95

>> Only try this on an actual car if you know what you’re doing. Even though only two very small patches are made to the model specific calibration values, making changes to your EPS might have unintended consequences. The author has no idea what he's doing, or more specifically what hazards might be lurking right under his nose. I worked in EPS for 6 years and it's all really cool stuff right up until you download c…

[deleted]

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#125

Post by userbinator »

grishka wrote: post #122
trulyme wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now. Like web pages used to work if you disabled JavaScript.

This is different. Cars could potentially be driven far away from civilization, so their reliability is sometimes critical for their occupants' survival. A car can't disable itself and leave people stranded in the middle of nowhere just because it doesn't have a cellular signal to phone home. And btw, many web pages do still work if you disable js. I'm saying that as someone who routinely disables js for websites tha…

Unfortunately, that situation has already happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873234

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#126

Post by monocasa »

chrisseaton wrote: post #114
monocasa wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pad system used by the military predigitisation[0] was a set of keys to input into a keystream generator rather than a strict one time pad style system, except for very specific and limited espionage use cases. And it wouldn't be one time, it'd be on the order of a daily key rotation with key reuse (with maybe a few chosen per day depending on classification level). [0] I'm assuming we mean computerized here. Old…

> I'm assuming we mean computerized here No, pre common man-pack digital radios, so as recently as just prior to this century. They used paper one-time pads, with a big list of table indices for substitution. You still get them for use when you have no digital crypto for whatever reason.

That's not quite what I'm seeing, instead that what I believe you're talking about (Morse code over open air with a Diana cipher backed by one time pads) were pretty much exclusively used by special forces in Vietnam. The issues with key distribution inherent in one time pads otherwise got in the way of cross team cooperation too much since each pad would only exist in two places (the spec ops team, and a major base close by, but not a FOB in case it was overrun).

They might have taught that use case to radio operator MOSs, but it wasn't actually deployed in the general case it seems.

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#127

Post by userbinator »

jhallenworld wrote: post #92
bob1029 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never purchase a vehicle for my own purposes that does not use hydraulics for brakes and steering. Putting a computer between my foot/hands and the physics unfolding in front of me is a total non-starter.

Maybe it's safer than hydraulic power steering. With electronics, there could be all kinds of self tests, for example that one of the H-bridge MOSFETs is shorted or open, akin to a valve being stuck.

In my experience, traditional "analog" systems degrade far more gracefully and this applies to automotive too; there's usually a long period where you notice things getting worse slowly due to wear, before ultimate failure.

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#128

Post by syshum »

olivermarks wrote: post #115
syshum wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I predict pre permissioned requested travel will quickly follow. Excuse me sir, Did you upload your drive path to NHTSA today? No that will be a $300 fine...

It's not too hard to imagine requesting permission to travel, a robotaxi showing up and taking you to your location and funds deducted per mile and for damage to the planet compensation, assuming you got the necessary permissions granted in the first place...

Sounds like what is happening in parts of Australia today, only under the context of COVID...

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#129

Post by grishka »

userbinator wrote: post #125
grishka wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different. Cars could potentially be driven far away from civilization, so their reliability is sometimes critical for their occupants' survival. A car can't disable itself and leave people stranded in the middle of nowhere just because it doesn't have a cellular signal to phone home. And btw, many web pages do still work if you disable js. I'm saying that as someone who routinely disables js for websites tha…

Unfortunately, that situation has already happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873234

That was at least a carsharing car. It's a well-known fact that these need connectivity (your only means of unlocking them is the app, after all) and have a severely limited area where you could drive them. Though that one time when I took a carsharing car 70 km away from the city where it apparently couldn't communicate (but my phone had LTE) it didn't disable itself, it just didn't lock when the app thought it did. So it does depend on the particular way the particular company implemented its remote control unit I guess?

I'm talking more about the situation where it's your own car.

Re: Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU

#130

Post by chrisseaton »

monocasa wrote: post #126
chrisseaton wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm assuming we mean computerized here No, pre common man-pack digital radios, so as recently as just prior to this century. They used paper one-time pads, with a big list of table indices for substitution. You still get them for use when you have no digital crypto for whatever reason.

That's not quite what I'm seeing, instead that what I believe you're talking about (Morse code over open air with a Diana cipher backed by one time pads) were pretty much exclusively used by special forces in Vietnam. The issues with key distribution inherent in one time pads otherwise got in the way of cross team cooperation too much since each pad would only exist in two places (the spec ops team, and a major base…

> That's not quite what I'm seeing ... it wasn't actually deployed in the general case

I'm was literally trained in the British variant of technique I'm describing. There's a wikipedia article about it, and it's referenced from this cryptography wiki's one-time-pad page. Other countries used similar systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BATCO

https://cryptography.fandom.com/wiki/One-time_pad

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