Hack Your Ignition (Before Someone Else Does)

guanxi writes: "IEEE Spectrum has an interesting article about hacking and specifically, the "hacker's nirvana on wheels", all the way from hot-rodding to reprogramming your digital ignition. Of course, I neither endorse nor recommend any of the procedures mentioned, any of which may be inherently dangerous to your life and your warranty. "

Tune with care

[klui]

One of the problems with tuners is that they add more power without accounting for aging of components. This isn't usually a problem in racing since you're rebuilding your components after every or a number of races. But for "hackers," they often tune it and forget it--or tune it and increase the mods. Sometime down the road, they'll blow a piston or apex seal without warning. Not to mention several thousand dollars' down the drain.

I personally prefer more conservative tuning, but then when some guy beats you during an ad-hoc "race," your first instinct is "gotta get mo' power."

A question

[sllort]

Reverse-engineering is fun. Reverse-engineering embedded systems is even more fun, because it's hard. Reverse-engineering safety-critical embedded systems is really challenging, and not for the stupid.

Now, what the author is talking about is reverse-engineering the systems that control AntiLock braking, ignition, and transmission control, among other things. It's a really cheap way to improve performance on a car.

Car companies (well, at least Ford [fordreallysucks.com]) have a bad history when it comes to electronic civil liberties. At what point in reverse-engineering a throttle control system would you be "bypassing an access protection device"? Probably never. But consider that Adobe got someone jailed for breaking ROT13; Cuecat was XOR. If people start selling hot-rod software (and they are), how long will it be till auto manufacturers start answering Yes to the author's "is it encrypted" question. It might only be ROT13, but it would be enough to bust anyone who was selling firmware upgrades for a Mustang and put them out of business for good.

Anyone remember the 60 minutes Audi 5000 scandal? Where the car's fuel injection system was said to, in rare cases, cause the car to accelerate out of control, causing injury or death? Let your subconcious do the dreaming about the accidents that could come from improperly debugged ABS code or throttle control. Now imagine that someone hacks their car's firmware, crashes in a fireball, and their family sues the automaker. The automaker can't prove that the car was modified... at all.

My prediction: this stuff will scare automakers shitless, and they will fall all overthemselves to find a way to apply the DMCA to stopping the dissemination of reverse-engineering information.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Re:Tune with care

[KernelHappy]

Very good point. The author also mentions how physical hacking on a car is more expensive because sometimes you have to test things to the point of destruction. He fails to recognize that hacking away at inginition timing and/or the air/fuel mixture through software can cause lots of damage (modified RX7's are great for this).

I'm all for hacking cars. I personally dislike the way manufacturers today make it nearly impossible to replace a factory stereo without major work. Look at newer Mercedes and BMW's (especially the new 745 with iDrive). There have been plenty of times I wished I could change the way the Mercedes navigation system takes user input (scroll left and right to select letters, I'd much prefer using the numbers on the keypad). I'd also like to fix a bug where the integrated telephone only lets you dial the first number associated with a particular name (Timeports allow multiple number per location/name) but I'm stuck until they get enough complaints and do it themselves.

Re:Very common already

[bunyip]

Now how many people out there can spare the time, effort, and money to have a system that really only performs marginally better than anything that can be bought off the shelf? Not many people, that's for sure.

Hmmm - what about overclockers? Submerge your MB in liquid nitrogen to gain a couple o' hundred MHz? I've seen some pretty cool hacks on /. over the last couple of years.

How about spending nights and weekends hacking the Linux kernel to reduce interrupt latency? Would the "average" computer user care or notice?

I would think that many people would do this. We nerds have a kindred spirit in hot-rodders. To them, a generic four-banger is the M$ of the automotive world.

I would like to add that I'm both a computer hacker and car hacker (Subaru WRX). I also brew my own beer (beer hacker?).

Re:Hacking the Odometer

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually there is a big sticker back there that will tell you if that has been tampered with.

I would say if you are buying a car that looks like it was way too few miles, then maybe have this checked.

Another way is to check the tires. Is there too much wear for the number of miles are on it? If not, have they been replaced? If you are getting a car that doesn't have original tires after 15,000 miles, its a good sign its been tampered with.

Also, check the ball joints on the stearing in front. I know its silly, but those will show wear pretty well. Struts and shocks are another good indicator.

Re:Very common already

[milkmandan9]

Hmmm - what about overclockers? Submerge your MB in liquid nitrogen to gain a couple o' hundred MHz? I've seen some pretty cool hacks on /. over the last couple of years.

Very true. They're the same in spirit, and the only difference is in implementation.

You usally (usually!) don't have to worry about getting stuck in the middle of nowhere if your overclocked MB bites the dust, and when it does, it doesn't always (always!) mean that it will make a $4000 engine turn itself into scrap.

The skill sets are different, too. With overclocking, you need good computer skills and some common-sense mechanical and electrical skills. Beyond that, all you need is the cash to buy it all. When deciphering a modern engine management system you need a good background in CS, some workable knowledge of EE, and enough mechanical skills to get the damned thing running.

Or, in the case of some (some!) of the vinyl-sticker-emblazoned, wake-the-neighborhood-up-at-3am types, all you need is a good instruction manual or a mechanic worth his price.

But I definitely agree with you. The spirit is the same.

Re:Hmm..

[John_Booty]

The car manufacturers have another very good reason for keeping the electonics systems relatively simple- so they WORK BETTER. Each flaw costs them millions of dollars in recalls or warrantied repairs. The less extraneous shit they cram into the electronics, the less is likely to go wrong.

Maybe commerical software engineers will realize this, some day? ;-)

Re:AoA already does that

[tjb]

Good lord dude. What the hell do you need with 400 HP on something as small as an S4? Like changing tires much? How about cylinder heads? I heard those were real cheap now...

sigh

The high HP mainstream luxury sports cars (S4, M3/M5, 911, Corvette, etc), in general are limited at the power that they get because a) Its damn fast as is and b) its actually reliable at those HP/Torque numbers.

There's a very good reason why $150,000 Ferraris are in the shop for serious engine maintenance every 3000 miles: namely that there are physical limits with what can be done with internal combustion engines without sacrificing reliability. Hell, you'd think if they could make one that didn't require massive maintenance on a short schedule, they could sell it for twice as much.

Boosting an S4 to run with Ferraris is counter-productive in the sense that you're likely gonna end up paying the cost of a ferrari in maintenance anyway (well, not quite, but it will be damn expensive and unreliable).

Tim

Re:A question

[ndege]

it would be enough to bust anyone who was selling firmware upgrades for a Mustang and put them out of business for good.

<RANT>

Put who out of business!? The car companies? This is stupid. They are not giving away cars like the cuecat was given away, nor are they selling or offering the "firmware" updates. My personal feeling is that the car companies have it right. You purchase the hardware...you don't license it. After it is yours, you can cut it up into little pieces and send each little screw as stocking stuffers to all your family all around the world. You could then, at the next family reunion, put the car back together. The car companies don't care. (It would make news sites such as slashdot.) But, the point is the car companies already made their profit.

As for the safety point of view: once again, the car companies do not care. There have been thousands of cars chopped to pieces to be something they weren't originally. Think hotrods, think limo's, think tree-hugging hippies that covert their cars to electric. Sometimes the car companies use it as free advertising. Again, they aren't licensing the car, they sold the car. Once people start to modify the car, the car companies are no longer responsible. (ie: with some cars, you can't even take the car to have minor service performed by any company other than the dealer without voiding the warranty and causing a "hands off" condition by the car manufacturer.) The car companies are only responsibile for the original products safety...not ensuring that it can't be "hacked."

Sorry, but your near-sighted words bother me.

</RANT>

Mod this parent up as funny!

[Mustang Matt]

"My Honda Integra Type R manages about three-four times the power of your big-iron block at the same rev range, not to mention around the same torque."

ROFL! You do realize that HP is a function of torque at a particular RPM right? Ummm... Not too many 4 bangers have v8 torque at ANY rpm let alone the same rpm.

Re:car mods

[jamie]

"a big-assed spoiler on the rear of a front wheel drive car is a pretty stupid thing. You're getting downforce on the wrong wheels."

You usually are even on a rear-wheel-drive car. Almost every car sold to consumers understeers (meaning, in a corner at speed, when the tire adhesion limit is reached, the front tires start to slide first).

This is much safer than oversteer (rear tires slide first) for the average driver. Sliding off the road is bad, but not as bad as going into a spin. And if the driver is sharp enough to nail the brakes before the car leaves the pavement, the speed reduction and weight transfer mean the front tires get their bite back, and average drivers can hopefully steer out of the problem (especially with ABS, which rocks).

So unless you have a Porsche 911 or one of the 3 other bizarro mass-market cars that oversteer, think about what this hypothetical rear spoiler will do. Assume you have a rear-wheel-drive car. And assume for the sake of argument that this spoiler actually has a significant effect by the time you get up to 120 MPH or so. Your car's front wheels are going to go in a straight line if you try to take a corner too hard. Is it really smart to allot yourself an extra KICKASS 0.01 g of forward acceleration limit that your engine has no chance of even getting near anyway, at the cost of being a little more likely to pilot your 120 MPH car into a tree?

Spoilers are funny.

Re:Car Mods, Real Power versus Silly Stickers

[Posting=!Working]

[b]In the same fashion, you could take your '71 Nova SS 350 and blow away a stock 1995 civic. But you could also take the civic, add Nitrous, replace the hood with a fiberglass one, change the gears on the transmission, get a forced air kit, some traction bars, and a new set of cams, and run 11's. [/b]

As you (and most "ricer's") seem to conveniently forget, you could also add Nitrous (and all those other mods) to the Nova, and run 9's. The correct comparison is not a heavily modified Civic vs. a stock V8, but a heavily modified V8 vs. said Civic. And the large displacement V8 still wins. An engine with nearly 3x the displacement at the same level of modification will make more power. It's physics. Slap a turbo on a stock-motored Civic, tune it correctly, and you can run maybe a mid 12. A stock motored Camaro/Firebird can run high 12's, slap a turbo on one, and you will be in the mid-low 10's.