this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Even cheap cars now have hundreds of processors. Modules can throw errors, send the car into limp, or deactivate the vehicle entirely.
Plus, emissions.
It’s a different game now.
I'm sure that is what the car manufacturers claim.
Don’t take my word for it. Tear into any one of the dozens of black boxes in your car and take it apart. Analyze the chips soldered on the boards. You might get lucky and find all standard chips with information available from suppliers.
Try looking at the data going across any one of the several buses transiting your vehicle. OBD is easy. The others are usually encrypted and much higher speed.
Cars are legitimately complex. Don’t just listen to the manufacturers and scoff. Look up some research into breaking the communication protocols that MB or BMW use. Compare that with GM’s newest standard. Go ahead and practice your reverse engineering skills, because these things aren’t published.
Sounds like the problem is lack of regulations, not people repairing their own stuff. We are letting companies create unmanageable products then blaming owners for trying to take ownership. Encryption is a solved problem, and doesn't require a black box to be secure, in fact is more secure when it isn't. And this isn't the first time that Cara breaking on the road a risk. If someone put after market breaks on their car and they failed, people would die too, yet somehow we allowed that. Car manufacturers are being allowed to make anti-consumer decisions and are blaming us for them.
I’m not getting the feeling that you actually know what you’re talking about.
This isn’t a discussion about encryption, it’s about pairing modules. Encryption is absolutely necessary and is already used widely across the industry. It might not be transparent (open, published standards), but it’s there.
Illegitimate and low quality parts have always been a concern. You don’t seem like you are a car enthusiast, so go on any car forum or facebook group and ask about some fake wheels or eBay special turbos. You’ll get roasted and start a real stupid discussion on if knockoffs are great for the money or if you’ll die in a fiery wreck. These are simple physical objects which you can fake by casting a mould and pouring something vaguely metallic inside. Fake car electronics can be cheaply remade in a similar fashion. How do you know if a replacement ECU is actually taking in one of the hundreds of datapoints in order to calculate the exact fuel trim to safely use in the millisecond you’re polling? How do you know if your rebuilt or replacement transmission is equipped with the proper logic modules to not cause you to drop into first on the highway, causing you to destroy your engine and probably cause a serious accident?
How do you know the manufacturer-supplied module is doing the work it's supposed to without being able to verify it yourself? Boeing aircraft are having similar problems; if an industry that regulated is having issues, what is going to stop vehicle manufacturers from doing the same?
Give us the diagnostic tools and the parts. Operating with zero trust and verifying everything before and after install is the only way to be sure.