Hacking the CAN Bus: Basic Manipulation of a Modern Automobile Through CAN Bus Reverse Engineering

The modern automobile is an increasingly complex network of computer systems. Cars are no longer analog, mechanical contraptions. Today, even the most fundamental vehicular functions have become computerized. And at the core of this complexity is the Controller Area Network, or CAN bus. The CAN bus is a modern vehicle's central nervous system upon which the majority of intra-vehicular communication takes place. Unfortunately, the CAN bus is also inherently insecure. Designed more than 30 years ago, the CAN bus fails to implement even the most basic security principles. Prior scholarly research has demonstrated that an attacker can gain remote access to a vehicle's CAN bus with relative ease. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine how an attacker already inside a vehicle's network could manipulate the vehicle by reverse engineering CAN bus communications. By providing a reproducible methodology for CAN bus reverse engineering, this paper also serves as a basic guide for penetration testers and automotive security researchers. The techniques described in this paper can be used by security researchers to uncover vulnerabilities in existing automotive architectures, thereby encouraging automakers to produce more secure systems going forward.