Hacking Kia: Remotely Controlling Cars With Just a License Plate.
Hacking Kia: Remotely Controlling Cars With Just a License Plate.
On June 11th, 2024, we discovered a set of vulnerabilities in Kia vehicles that allowed remote control over key functions using only a license plate. These attacks could be executed remotely on any hardware-equipped vehicle in about 30 seconds, regardless of whether it had an active Kia Connect subs...
dumb cars will be worth their weight in gold soon
I wish, but most people don't know / care about this stuff, it's not going to really percolate into the public consciousness .
According to the dealership my car isn't worth it's weight grass clippings because it's too old.
lol it's not the dealers who will want them
You could just find and disable the wireless modems.
Not only what that other person said but it would probably void the warranty too.
Happy to have my 2012 civic. One of the last gens without a telemetry unit I think.
I drive a 2014 si
That Civic is hands down the most bulletproof, refined and perfected k-series car Honda ever produced, or ever will, at this point.
If anyone reading this wants a V6, find a manual TL. Equally bulletproof, but with a J-series and room to stretch out and they are CHEAP for zero reason on the market. I don't even understand it other than they don't really have tuning potential, but as a commuter car, they can't be beat for the price to comfort. They ride like clouds and have 300hp to punch with if you stomp them down an offramp.
I have a '01 Citroen and I'm gonna run it to the ground. She needs a big overhaul now, but for a 190'000Km car my baby is still pretty good.
The car will still work if you take the radio out or put a faraday cage around it, maybe that'll become a thing in the future, but that might fuck with the paid charging infrastructure for EVs. Doesn't impact gas.
Fucking wot
Yeah... fuck this shit. This is part of the reason I still drive a nearly 20 year old vehicle. It has features I want, and can't be stolen via fucking API calls. Absolute insanity.
I think Hyundai/Kia group has done unfathomable damage to their brands. Kia, despite being a budget brand, wants to be seen as a legit competitor to Toyota or at least Nissan. Their corner cutting with the immobilizers and the resulting "USB" theft shit was bad enough. Now this exploit.
They're just terrible cars. I've had two...they were great until they weren't. I literally had a screw fall out of the headliner the other day bringing it home from a nearly 1000$ exhaust patch/repair. It's not 10 years old yet and only has 60k miles.
The other one has had the engine replaced already (under warranty thank god).
We are likely replacing both of them next year. I'm never buying a Kia again.
My Toyota with 300k+ miles has cost me $285 in repairs minus maintenance costs. I’ll likely get at least another 100k. Just placing these goalposts here…
I had an '11 optima sx, right after the refresh. Beautiful car. Returned the lease on its 3rd engine.
1st one had a spark plug fail and basically melt. Piston seized. Had power, then it didn't, while doing 60 over a bridge.
2nd one went after an engine mount failed. Block ended up cracking.
Only consolation was that I was paying kia prices, not their over inflated sense of self pricing they try now.
There's just no good reason to have anything beyond the radio/nav etc in a car connected to the Internet. Remote start can be done with just the key.
I would say even those don't need Internet. Navigation can be updated using a USB drive, and I have a phone for audio so I just need bluetooth.
The only network connection I want in my car is to notify emergency services if the airbags go off.
Things like live traffic require a connection though, and Google maps I think does the routing calcs off the device. Most people will use their phone for all that, but the use case is there.
That’s a very subjective take. My friends and family that live in hot climates love the ability to remotely turn on and pre-cool their vehicles. I appreciate being able to check if I remembered to lock the doors.
And by using that internet connected feature you're 100% handing out your driving info to your car manufacturer, who in turn will sell it to LexisNexis, who in turn will sell it to insurance companies, who in turn will jack up your insurance prices.
😭
Let the fucking hacking begin. Fuck these assholes. They are milking people out of their last penny, and on top of that they're selling people's driving data to data brokers who sell it to insurance companies that jack up prices.
Let the fucking hacking begin. Fuck these assholes.
Then you're gonna hack the company, not the endusers' cars.
Right?
Right?
The ones on the dealership lot
I hope so? Lol
FYI: From the article: “These vulnerabilities have since been fixed, this tool was never released, and the Kia team has validated this was never exploited maliciously.”
Well I wouldn't really trust kia, who released these gaping vulnerabilities and benefit the most from pretending ain't no big thing, with these statements
I’ve noticed a lot of issues showing up for the Kia and Hyundai cars security wise. I wonder if they’re having issues because there’s more focus on those cars or if their security is really that bad.
The Kia/Hyundai "challenge" where people were stealing their cars with a USB cord is because they opted not to include an immobilizer in US models for a decade. Every other car brand had them as standard. Kia even had them as standard in non US cars, but because the USA stupidly does not have a law about it, they opted to drastically reduce car security to save a few dollars per car.
This has made them prime targets, as people know they make bad security choices whenever they can save a buck.
So a bit of both, I expect.
I'm still amazed that immobilizers aren't a legal requirement in the USA, and that Kia would remove them from US models just to save a small amount of money.
Both probably. I’m sure a lot of cars have problems like this, but they just haven’t been found and there are already known vulnerabilities to focus on.
Don't look into South Korean web security. If their cars are as badly designed as their websites... Yikes
They went balls deep with the devil's spawn called nprotect.
This is the problem with digital serfdom, those lording it over us aren't perfect either. Not only should we be able to connect our cars to our own server, we should be able inspect provided server implementation to see if it's a bag of nails.
aren't perfect either
You misspelled "are fucking morons" :)
This is why you have to install the latest software updates on your license plate. One time I let my gas cap firmware get outdated and someone downloaded my car.
$ wget kiasorrento. sh
...looks like it's my car now. 😈😆
Why does a car need to be connected to the internet? A reliable rule of conduct in aeronautics is that systems which are deemed critical to safety are air gapped from the systems which are connected to the internet, so in the event that those systems are compromised by malware or hackers, the safety critical systems won't also be compromised.
Why is it seemingly taking automotive manufacturers so long to catch on to this principle? Before anyone mentions downloadable features, I do not see that as a means of justification. Like with videogames, if you're paying good money for a product, that product should already be finished by release. Hiding content that should already exist on a car is egregious and the normalisation of it incentivizes manufacturers to release vehicles that are incomplete and should not have been released in their current state.
This is my car, I have a stereo with entertainment features. My mileage, drive time, fuel economy, and anything related to the systems of the car, shows up on a separate display strip. To the best of my knowledge, the stereo cannot control the car in any way. Its just there to play music for me. I dread the day I have to replace this car. I may just buy an old pre-telemetry 4x4. The roads around here have gotten too bad for a hatchback anyway.
Yup, that's how it should be across the board. That's how it is with modern airliners. The redundancy of having each system be controlled by multiple computers is nullified if a hacker can get to control all of them, including the ones which are safety critical, just by hacking one. I honestly don't blame you, I love the internet but there really are situations where something really doesn't need to be connected to the internet.
Nice writeup
I know the majority of you hate Tesla, but security is something they do take more seriously. They even take part in pwn2own to help find vulnerabilities.
All auto manufacturers should be taking part in that.
Nothing like winning a car to get people to try and break into it publicly.
Edit: Also details on the 2025 event in January just recently announced. https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2024/9/23/announcing-pwn2own-automotive-for-2025
I have my money on Tesla being the first cloud-connected car (that phrase shouldn't exist) to be hacked and push a malicious firmware that will cause all cars to simultaneously activate self driving and to pull a hard left at a specific time (time bomb).
You should watch - Leave the World Behind
You might be right, but I don't think it'll be because their cars are the easiest to hack, it'll be because they have the most cars out there capable of doing this and it'd be more impactful attack if successful.
(edit: Also they'd be able to exert the most control on their cars with the software/sensors available today at scale. E.g they could more easily have the car drive around until it finds a pedestrian to hit)
(edit: Further, you can make the most changes to a Tesla as they have one of the more (or probably most) advanced OTA update capabilities)
They are definitely a prime target.
We hate Elon, Tesla is Ok
There's a portion that only hate Elon and not Tesla, but there's a lot of Tesla hate out there as well, and there has been since even before Elon publicly went off the deepend.
Some of that might be decisions that Elon made for Tesla, but it's still at Tesla.
Edit: but I will take your point and say my use of majority in my OP wasn't correct as the majority here is about Elon.
I also love how Tesla engineers pay attention to small quality-of-life things like racing games to play while you wait for charge using the wheel as controller, using the built-in 360 camera as dashcam and parking monitor.
smiles contentedly in 2003 1.8T Jetta 5MT
Agreed. But I am getting more and more concerned we won't always be able to keep or buy an old car and avoid these pitfalls
I'm likely 3 to 6 years away from having to buy a new/used car and I don't think il be able to (or actually want) a 20 year old car
Yeah I have to replace the suction side AC line on mine and the OE part alone is about 350-400 and absolutely impossible to find 💀