"Software Developer Cracks Hyundai Car Security with Google Search"

Daniel Feldman, a software engineer, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, wanted to customize the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system in his 2021 Hyundai Ioniq SEL. He discovered that the car's manufacturer had secured its system using keys that were not only publicly known but had been taken from programming examples. He was able to run his own software on the infotainment hardware. To do this, he figured out how to connect to the device and circumvent its security. Feldman discovered an unexpected way to customize firmware updates for the IVI's D-Audio2 system and have them accepted by the IVI. Firmware updates are accepted by the IVI in the form of password-protected ZIP archives. Feldman downloaded an update ZIP from Hyundai's website and accessed its contents, including encrypted firmware images for various parts of the IVI, bypassing the archive's password protection. His goal then became to create his own firmware images and encrypt them in a way that the car would accept, install, and run, allowing him to control the hardware using his own supplied code. Feldman came across a Linux setup script on Mobis' website that created a suitable ZIP file for performing a system update. The script included the ZIP password required for the system update archives, as well as an AES symmetric Cipher-Block-Chaining (CBC) encryption key and the initialization vector value required to encrypt the firmware images. This data could be used to decrypt the images as well. He could decrypt the firmware images with the AES key, modify them, and then use the script to re-encrypt the images with the AES key and package it all up into a password-protected ZIP for Hyundai's IVI update system to ingest. This article continues to discuss how Feldman was able to crack the security of his Hyundai car. 

The Register reports "Software Developer Cracks Hyundai Car Security with Google Search"