replay attack

4 Articles

Fail Of The Week: Subscription EV Charger Becomes Standalone, Briefly

November 1, 2024 by 48 Comments

At this point in the tech dystopia cycle, it’s no surprise that the initial purchase price of a piece of technology is likely not the last payment you’ll make. Almost everything these days needs an ongoing subscription to do whatever you paid for it to do in the first place. It’s ridiculous, especially when all you want to do is charge your electric motorcycle with electricity you already pay for; why in the world would you need a subscription for that?

That was [Maarten]’s question when he picked up a used EVBox wall mount charger, which refused to charge his bike without signing up for a subscription. True, the subscription gave access to all kinds of gee-whiz features, none of which were necessary for the job of topping off the bike’s battery. A teardown revealed a well-built device with separate modules for mains supply and battery charging, plus a communications module with a cellular modem, obviously the bit that’s phoning home and keeping the charger from working without the subscription.

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A Honda car behind a gate, with its turn signals shown blinking as it's being unlocked by a portable device implementing the hack in question. Text under the car says "Rolling Pwned".

Unlock Any (Honda) Car

July 8, 2022 by 76 Comments

Honda cars have been found to be severely  vulnerable to a newly published Rolling PWN attack, letting you remotely open the car doors or even start the engine. So far it’s only been proven on Hondas, but ten out of ten models that [kevin2600] tested were vulnerable, leading him to conclude that all Honda vehicles on the market can probably be opened in this way. We simply don’t know yet if it affects other vendors, but in principle it could. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE-2021-46145.

[kevin2600] goes in depth on the implications of the attack but doesn’t publish many details. [Wesley Li], who discovered the same flaw independently, goes into more technical detail. The hack appears to replay a series of previously valid codes that resets the internal PRNG counter to an older state, allowing the attacker to reuse the known prior keys. Thus, it requires some eavesdropping on previous keyfob-car communication, but this should be easy to set up with a cheap SDR and an SBC of your choice.

If you have one of the models affected, that’s bad news, because Honda probably won’t respond anyway. The researcher contacted Honda customer support weeks ago, and hasn’t received a reply yet. Why customer support? Because Honda doesn’t have a security department to submit such an issue to. And even if they did, just a few months ago, Honda has said they will not be doing any kind of mitigation for “car unlock” vulnerabilities.

As it stands, all these Honda cars affected might just be out there for the taking. This is not the first time Honda is found botching a rolling code implementation – in fact, it’s the second time this year. Perhaps, this string of vulnerabilities is just karma for Honda striking down all those replacement part 3D models, but one thing is for sure – they had better create a proper department for handling security issues.

Hacker Claims Honda And Acura Vehicles Vulnerable To Simple Replay Attack

August 30, 2021 by 25 Comments

Keyless entry has become a standard feature on virtually all cars, where once it was a luxury option. However, it’s also changed the way that thieves approach the process of breaking into a car. After recent research, [HackingIntoYourHeart] claims that many modern Honda and Acura vehicles can be accessed with a simple replay attack using cheap hardware. 

It’s a bold claim, and one that we’d love to see confirmed by a third party. The crux of the allegations are that simply recording signals from a Honda or Acura keyfob is enough to compromise the vehicle. Reportedly, no rolling code system is implemented and commands can easily be replayed.

Given these commands control features like unlocking the doors, opening the trunk, and even remote starting the vehicle, it’s a concerning situation. However, it’s also somewhat surprising. Rolling code technology has been around for decades, and makes basic replay attacks more difficult. Range extender attacks that target keyfobs sitting inside homes or gas stations are more common these days.

Whether Honda has made a security faux pas, or if there’s something more at play here, remains to be seen. If you’ve got more information, or have been able to recreate the same hack on your own Honda, be sure to let us know. 

RF Hacking: How-To Bypass Rolling Codes

March 6, 2016 by 19 Comments

The RF signal transmitted from a modern key fob and received by the associated vehicle is only used once. If the vehicle sees the same code again it rejects the command, however there is a loophole in those carefully chosen words. The code must be received by the vehicle’s computer before it can be added to the list of spent codes. [AndrewMohawk] goes through the process of intercepting a code sent from a key fob transmitter and preventing the vehicle from receiving it in a thorough post to his blog. You can see this attack working in his studio quality reenactment video after the break.

[Andrew] uses the YARD Stick One (YS1) which is a sub-GHz wireless tool that is controlled from a computer. The YS1 uses RfCat firmware, which is an interactive python shell that acts as the controller for the wireless transceiver.

This system is not without its problems: different frequencies are often used for different commands, [Andrew]’s scripts are designed to work with On-Off keying (OOK) leaving it useless when attacking a system that uses Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK). There is also the issue of rendering a target key fob non-functional but you’ll have to pop over to [Andrew]’s blog to read more about that.

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