Rolling-PWN vulnerability affects all Honda vehicles

https://rollingpwn.github.io/rolling-pwn/

by panarky • 4 years ago

156 101 4 years ago

rollingpwn.github.io

ncmncm• 4 years ago

I guess all older cars' doors have a similar vulnerability. But starting the engine, too, is more fun.

bregma• 4 years ago

We have dubbed that door vulnerability "cp4t hangar" and the ignition vulnerability "5crew 6r1ver" and have registered them in the common vulnerability database for credit and publicity purposes.

londons_explore• 4 years ago

My car was broken into with this technique :-(.

You can buy (on the usual dodgy places) a briefcase with a multi-car unlocker which will unlock lots of different cars if turned on in a car park, allowing you to then empty out the contents of any car that does then unlock.

And since there is no smashed window, insurance won't pay out either.

Axien• 4 years ago

The technique described is a replay vulnerability. The attacker must record you unlocking your vehicle. What you describe sounds different, but even more scary.

eugenekolo• 4 years ago

Isn't it potentially a replay attack the poster is describing?

In a simple form it seems like this: The attack is you have a briefcase that contains specific RF transceiving components in it. You turn the brief case on in a hidden place, leave it, it records data, you come back to it later, and then press a button(s) that replays those RF signals.

Perhaps, there's some very weak cars that don't even need a replay, but are vulnerable to a master key, or bruteforce, or something else.

snarfy• 4 years ago

What? Fuck insurance. I would smash my own window then.

tasty_freeze• 4 years ago

25 years ago, a (then) friend had a nice car, bought it new. IIRC it was a BMW. He was hypervigilent about its condition. One night some thieves broke into his car and did some damage. Replacing the window wasn't a worry -- that can be replaced good as new, but they had put some dings in the hood somehow.

He was worried that insurance wouldn't replace the hood but would just pay someone to try to knock them back into shape, which was unacceptable to him. So he went and bashed up the hood himself with a bat. The insurance claims guy came out to inspect it and said: we'll replace the window and we'll have a shop hammer out out the damage in the hood.

Served him right.

jeroenhd4• 4 years ago

Replay attacks like these won't work for what happened to you, most likely the manufacturer of your car opted for an insecure unlocking protocol (i.e. a static key programmed into the remote) that's easily brute forceable. These were common for ages, and I don't understand why (especially technical) people trusted wireless unlocking technology.

Modern systems have some form of protection against brute force and replay attacks but personally I don't trust them.

wongarsu2• 4 years ago

It's not like keys for pin tumbler locks are very secure either.

I think the main drawback of wireless unlocking is that hacking it is less conspicuous. If you have a device that can unlock a car in 10 times the time it takes with the legitimate key that looks suspicious if you spend that time holding an object to a keyhole, it's completely unnoticeable if you stand a couple meters away on a parking lot doing it wirelessly. Even worse with a method that works on 10% of cars: with a physical keyhole you go from car to car, looking very suspicious, with a wireless device you just stand there and go to the first car that unlocks.

wallaBBB6• 4 years ago

That would be hard-coded on the vehicle side, but this looks more like a simply signal jammer that is described in this attack. They simple jam the RKE Lock command when you're leaving your car, you don't pay attention to the light signalization for the successful Lock and move on. They come and still anything valuable from the inside.

99_002• 4 years ago

How do you know that you didn't just leave the door unlocked?

giobox2• 4 years ago

While it won't be true for all and can often be configured, many keyless entry systems nowadays lock the doors once key leaves vicinity of the car whether you remember to lock the doors or not.

Johnny555• 4 years ago

And since there is no smashed window, insurance won't pay out either.

If you have comprehensive insurance (which is what would cover a stolen car), they'll pay whether or not it was broken into, you left the keys in it, or even if you left the engine running while unattended.

https://www.progressive.com/answers/car-theft-with-keys-in-c...

As long as you have comprehensive coverage, you can file a claim if your car is stolen while left running. Comprehensive can still pay to replace your vehicle if it's stolen while your keys are inside it or if you left it running.

Car insurance won't pay for any personal effects stolen from the car, that would be covered by homeowners insurance, but as long as you have a police report, they'll cover it. I had a bicycle stolen from my (unlocked) car while parked in a garage -- homeowners insurance just asked for the police report, then sent me a check for the bike. They d

Fnoord2• 4 years ago

I bet it works similar to the garage door opening hack (opensesame by Samy Kamkar) and utilizes De Brujin Sequence. You don't need a briefcase for such. A small Raspberry Pi with a Yard Stick One is suffice.

buescher4• 4 years ago

opensesame is clever, but it only works on fixed code schemes decoded with a shift register or equivalent. This vulnerability affects rolling code schemes.

sokoloff• 4 years ago

“Affects all Honda vehicles [from model year 2012 and up]”.

mabbo• 4 years ago

My car is the first on the list, a 2012 Honda Civic.

Thankfully I've been doing a lot of research lately on buying a new car and whichever EV I want is only a 6-24 month waiting list.

(But truthfully, my car sits barely used in a secure underground garage 99% of the time- I'm not very worried)

capableweb7• 4 years ago

It's unclear if the authors actually responsibly disclosed this, although they did make some attempts at contacting Honda, it's unclear how long they waited for a reply.

What does Honda think about this Rolling-PWN Bug?
We have searched through the Honda official website, but we can not find any contact info for report Vulnerability. Seems Honda motor DOES NOT have a department to deal with security related issue for their products. And a person who works at HONDA has told us "The best way to report the Honda vulnerability is to contact customer service". Therefore, we filed a report to Honda Customer service, but we have not get any reply yet.
In addition, we found an article from Bleeping-Computer (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/honda-bug-let...), which Seems that Honda does not care about security issues anyway :(

Hope the authors are either anonymous enough or in a jurisdiction they can't be sued for making this public.

Fnoord2• 4 years ago

Looks like they published various videos of them exploiting the vulnerability in public space. Supposedly, OSINT techniques could at least uncover these locations.

iancarroll• 4 years ago

Is the obligation to find a security disclosure contact really on an individual researcher who already did free work for them, or is it on Honda to make it easy? I do not blame them at all.

If corporations deprioritize security, that doesn’t mean we should shift responsibility onto individuals.

capableweb7• 4 years ago

I absolutely don't blame them either, I wish more people showed how absolutely insecure most modern systems are.

I'm was simply writing my comment out of worry for their safety, nothing else.

jeroenhd4• 4 years ago

What would the illegal part be in this instance? They're not illegally accessing Honda's services, which is what most security researchers can end up sued about. This is a local replay attack using the researcher's own hardware. I don't see why they would possibly need to inform Honda first.

Responsible disclosure for issues like these is more of a curtousy to show good intent and to protect people by allowing the manufacturer to roll out patches. Honda doesn't seem interested in protecting their customers and they seem unwilling to get into contact with these people, so if it's true that they tried to contact Honda, that's enough of a curtousy for me, at least.

capableweb7• 4 years ago

What would the illegal part be in this instance?

I don't know exactly what country they're located in, but I'm assuming that filming yourself unlocking random peoples car in the wild can be classified as breaking into something, especially if a corporation would like to hide a story and have government contacts they can engage in the silencing.

I don't see anything wrong with what they did, they went above and beyond to test Honda's systems for Honda, in exchange for nothing. But I do worry about courts not being as technically adept as me, and not seeing it like this.

revjx• 4 years ago

I work with Honda. I've passed the link on. Doesn't look great if you appear to be ignoring this kind of thing!

foobiekr• 4 years ago

Honda makes great, reliable cars but they don’t give a shit about software or stuff like this.

Consider their refusal to fix their head units - https://didhondafixtheclocks.com/

greatgib• 4 years ago

"Honda has no plan to update older vehicles at this time"

Could this be legal? What would happen if your car is stolen because of that? Under french law, I think that it would be a "hidden defect" that the manufacturer has to cover for.

capableweb7• 4 years ago

That's from earlier this year (CVE-2022-27254), hopefully they changed their mind as of late (however, seems unlikely). If not after that incident became public, maybe by now when even more vulnerabilities are becoming public.

Karliss• 4 years ago

Is there a link to more detailed technical description?

From the description it almost sounds like validation for counter synchronization is separate from validation for command execution and it doesn't take into account requirement of counter in the message being bigger than counter in last valid message. Thus allowing to rollback the counter and making previously recorder messages valid again.

capableweb7• 4 years ago

9: Is there more technical information about Rolling-PWN?
You can follow the author on Twitter [@kevin2600] (https://twitter.com/kevin2600). However, we will not be releasing any tools required to go out and steal the affected vehicles. At a later stage, we will release technical information in order to encourage more researchers to get involved in the car security research.

PLG88• 4 years ago

One can only hope that it's these sort of events which slowly pushes to having more legislation and responsibility to the provider of digital services (i.e., Honda) if things go wrong (e.g., goods inside or even vehicle stolen).

While I am 99% sure the politicians will write crappy legislation, over time it should become better and ensure that the purveyor of compromised SW is responsible for their sloppy work. It took decades but seatbelts, crash tests etc etc made us all massively safer when driving and we probably need the same minimum across some digital services.

b1123• 4 years ago

One thing.

The system can auto correct.

For example, one person claims that such a vulnerability means that the insurance company won't pay, for it leaves no smashed windows if you are robbed.

However, all it takes is one person going to court, publicizing it enough, and winning against the insurance company.

What happens? The insurance company, naturally, starts to increase rates for owners of that brand of car.

It has to pay out more often, for that car has a weakness, and this is the result.

This has happened before, with cars that didn't have physical steering wheel ignition locks, back in the 80s.

The result? Sales dropped for those cars, no one wants to pay 50% more for insurance, and manufacturers quickly worked to fix the issue.

It's a sad thing though, to see a relentless stare at the daily, short term bottom line, without thought to other factors, and long term profit.

Way to drive away customers, and crash a reputation! Brands to steer clear of, to be sure!

tatersolid• 4 years ago

This effect only helps future car buyers, it doesn’t make the owners of vulnerable vehicles any safer or compensate them in any way.

throwaway0a5e• 4 years ago

The result? Sales dropped for those cars, no one wants to pay 50% more for insurance, and manufacturers quickly worked to fix the issue.

In all cases the margins were razor thin. Poorly equipped cars were stolen marginally more and likewise cost a trivial amount more to insure.

But personal new car buying is 500% driven by consumers using emotion driven logic to magnify tiny differences so sales dropped, somewhat, maybe. It's hard to separate this from the variable of older products and cheaper products generally selling less well than the new hotness. Column locks went on to become standard as OEMs refreshed product lines and did mid-life facelifts.

rmilk• 4 years ago

Same thing happened when EMV was first rolled out. There was replay attack fraud, but the cardholder was blamed for it. But once you get enough complaints, it forces insurance and gov oversight into action as you describe. Article from Brian Krebs on EMV implementation issues back in 2014 timeframe for example: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/09/researchers-chip-and-pin...

MrQuimico• 4 years ago

How is a car a digital service? Is this system using some type of software? Sure, but that doesn’t make it a digital service.

Also, where do you live that businesses selling goods to you are not liable if they don’t work as expected? This is not a software problem, the problem here is that a key doesn’t work as expected. The fact that it may “have software” somewhere doesn’t make the problem go away.

coffeeoverflow• 4 years ago

CVE-2021-46145 The keyfob subsystem in Honda Civic 2012 vehicles allows a replay attack for unlocking. This is related to a non-expiring rolling code and counter resynchronization.

Not a new threat https://s34s0n.github.io/2019/07/18/Jam-and-Replay-Attacks-o...

TacticalCoder• 4 years ago

A rolling code system in keyless entry systems is to prevent replay attack.

More specifically: rolling codes are used to prevent replay attack while allowing the remote fob to be only a transmitter, not a receiver, which saves on costs.

If there was bi-directional communication there are obviously better ways to secure the fob/car (like regular challenge/response).

philipov• 4 years ago

Do we say that someone affected by this vulnerability got PWNed?

threemux2• 4 years ago

I have a 2013 Honda Civic Si (USA) and it does not have a keyless start system (you have to put the key into the ignition to start it). Also, like any manual car I've driven, you have to press the clutch in or it won't start. To unlock, a button on the keyfob must be pressed. As far as I can tell, this means my car is not affected but I'm not sure. If it's not, then the statement that it affects all Hondas after 2012 is incorrect.

luma• 4 years ago

Having a car that nobody wants to steal is an effective theft prevention strategy

threemux2• 4 years ago

Yeah I suppose that's one way to do it. I go for the combo of having a garage and driving a manual, which is itself a theft prevention device in the US these days

causi2• 4 years ago

Also, like any manual car I've driven, you have to press the clutch in or it won't start.

This is such an infuriating trend in modern cars, especially hybrids. I can never tell when the damn thing is done starting up so at least ten percent of the time I take my foot off too early and it just goes "Try again, bitch."

aidenn0• 4 years ago

I also used to start the car in neutral, which doesn't work on new cars

wallaBBB6• 4 years ago

Dude RKE is not the keyless you think, your probably thinking of passive keyless. This is pressing your LOCK/UNLOCK button, and if you have buttons on your FOB than you have this issue.

jakub_g• 4 years ago

Question for folks who are knowledgable in the subject:

Which car manufacturers have good security when it comes to those wireless keys? Are there any?

I feel like most of those things are either designed by regular developers who lack the hacker mindset; or maybe they do have it, but product management cuts corners to have better 'ease of use' etc.

kube-system3• 4 years ago

Car manufacturers don't even make the wireless key systems, they buy them from Mitsuibishi/Siemens/Alps, etc

mariojv• 4 years ago

Does anyone know if it's actually common for these vulns to be exploited by thieves?

I've heard of people using amplification attacks where they simply amplify the key fob from a distance (https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/car-thieves-are-hacking-key...), but using a replay exploit like this seems like it's a lot less common. Lately the big thing locally (south central Texas) has been catalytic converter thefts more than stealing anything inside the car though.

amluto4• 4 years ago

Fundamentally, a cryptographic system that allows a key fob to authenticate itself with one-way communication to a car and does not require a real-time clock in the key fob is hard and maybe impossible to get right. One can certainly do better than what Honda did, but anything that checks all the boxes one would like needs some way to prevent replay even over many keypresses with no successful unlocks, and that needs either something visible to the car to change when the owner presses the button 100 times far away from the car (e.g. the time) or needs a form of communication in which the key isn’t simply broadcasting bearer tokens to the world.

rasz• 4 years ago

IR receiver in the key fob? Requiring you to stand in front of the car to sync.

mrex2• 4 years ago

Really, is TOTP too much to ask when they are charging $300-$500 for a single replacement key anyway?

pstrateman• 4 years ago

how do you put a real time clock into a key fob that can actually keep time?

wallaBBB6• 4 years ago

Yup, but the real problem here is the chosen re-synchronization strategy of the Rolling code when de-sync occurs (performed by the BCM/vehicle) that is done in backward. This is described in the article, but most of the comments here seem not to read the details.

Also Honda does offer bidirectional fobs, that make this attacks a lot harder (still not impossible if the same resync strategy is used)

amluto4• 4 years ago

I would argue that both problems are real. Yes, Honda’s resynchronization system is very weak, and a good system would require the owner to actually repeatedly press the button to resync and/or should only ever resync forward. But one-way protocols are also inherently vulnerable to long-range replay attacks if the owner can be convinced to push the bottom near the attacker even if they’re far from the car, and this is not really excusable for a device costing at least $10 (retail) talking to a car that costs thousands of dollars. A microcontroller with a bidirectional radio is cheap. Heck, an NFC device communicating using backscatter modulation that works with no battery is cheap enough for this application. You can find them in disposable subway tickets!

What is a bidirectional fob doing resyncing at all? There is absolutely no need for any sort of state in a bidirectional if any reasonable protocol is used. The fob should not even need writable nonvolatile memory.

xorcist2• 4 years ago

Why is it not a schoolbook example of public key crypto?

"I am fob", "Checks out, I am car", "Checks out, please open", "Ok".

Add some details such as nonces but not nothing out of the ordinary compared to things like mTLS or mobile phones that we use every day. What am I not seeing?

amluto4• 4 years ago

Your example involves two-way communication. These cheap key fobs are one-way. It’s more like:

(Press button) “hey, I’m the fob!”

There’s no communication back from the car because these systems are physically incapable of it.

Also, without some elaboration, your example is vulnerable to a replay attack too, but it’s not conceptually hard to fix. A simple arrangement that probably works (but would want a proof!) is:

“Hey, I’m fob #123” “Hey fob #123, I’m the car. The challenge is abc. Answer after 5ms.” “Hey car, HMAC(‘abc’, our secret) = ‘xyz’)”

And the car answers and also checks that the answer was received no more than 5.0000001 ms later. There are more clever variants of this sort of thing in the literature, and I don’t think cars use them because the manufacturers don’t seem to care. (The main problem with the scheme above that I’m immediately aware of is that it requires very good timing. If the microcontroller in the fob takes nearly 5ms to calculate the MAC and the goal is 100ns of allowable latency (100 ms is about 100 light-feet), then the timing precision needed is 20 ppm. Getting precision that good on a cheap key fob may be challenging. For that matter, getting that level of precision in the car, which may be rather hot, may cost more than the manufacturer wants to pay. More clever schemes don’t need this kind of precision. Also, my silly scheme has the fob broadcasting its identity every time a button is pressed, which isn’t great.)

jjav2• 4 years ago

These are another case where the sound engineering principle of KISS is forgotten. First introduce a more complex solution, find that it's broken, then keep adding more and more layers of complexity in the hardware, software and protocol to try to patch the problems that the initial complex solution introduced.

Meanwhile, my Honda has a physical key without a transmitter and the car has no receiver. There's nothing to intercept and I can go swimming with the key with no ill effect. No batteries to replace and if I need a new key it's $5, not $400. It's a brilliantly simple solution!

wallaBBB6• 4 years ago

So someone can pick a lock on your door and hotwire your car and steal it. But with this attack they can only get access to the car. Hotwiring if there is an immobilizer is not possible.

albrewer• 4 years ago

The lack of an immobilizer is why the 1997 Honda Civic was one of the most stolen cars ever

atomize2• 4 years ago

Is my 2000 CRV going to be safe?!? Bah, 2012-Current. *Misleading headline.

kube-system3• 4 years ago

Older Hondas are notorious for being able to be stolen by putting a screwdriver in the key cylinder and giving it a swift whack with a hammer. They don't assign those CVEs though.

atomize2• 4 years ago

Can confirm.

Source: Aforementioned 2000 CRV stolen once (Chicago =D) AND RECOVERED. Totally still working just dinged up a bit. They left it parked in front of a hydrant with the doors and windows open! Insurance totaled it, but said I could keep it.

That's the story of why I still have and drive a 22 year old, 5-speed, 2000 CRV. Hard to sell with the 'rebuilt' title, still runs great though. Dented up like a truck, but only has 135k miles. It's a keeper. My 'city' car.

99_002• 4 years ago

Congratulations to the team.

I wish theives would use sophisticated methods like this.

Instead I have to pay the decutable for broken car windows or replace it out of pocket.

If a thief is caught stealing (unlikely) the consequences are minimal. So little insensitive to use sophisticated methods.

Of course there are those that want undetected access to a vehicle for reasons other than stealing. But I'm not worried about that personally because I'm not important enough to be targeted.

Keep shedding light on these issues.

randcraw• 4 years ago

BTW, my 2019 Honda 'vehicle' config menu lets me enable/disable remote start.

It's been possible forever to unlock most cars by replay. I care a lot more about the crim driving it away. This news implies only that an enabled remote start can be compromised, not that every so-equipped Honda less than 10 years old is at risk. Just de-config your remote start.

kube-system3• 4 years ago

Compromising an OEM remote starter is not really a big problem anyway. The vehicle still will not allow you to shift out of park, and any modern system will only start the vehicle a limited number of times for a limited duration. They're inherently designed for unattended operation.

buescher4• 4 years ago

After each keyfob button pressed the rolling codes synchronizing counter is increased. However, the vehicle receiver will accept a sliding window of codes, to avoid accidental key pressed by design. By sending the commands in a consecutive sequence to the Honda vehicles, it will be resynchronizing the counter. Once counter resynced, commands from the previous cycle of the counter worked again. Therefore, those commands can be used later to unlock the car at will.

Could the counter and clock resynchronization schemes in RFC 6238 "TOTP: Time-Based One-Time Password Algorithm" and RFC 4226 "HOTP: An HMAC-Based One-Time Password Algorithm" have similar bugs? In implementation if not in principle?

Fatnino2• 4 years ago

"all" Honda vehicles.

I'll have you know I drive a Honda and it's not vulnerable to this attack.

2000 Honda civic

suprjami• 4 years ago

I bet you've also got 3 Spoon engines, and just came into Harry's and ordered 3 T66 turbos with NOS and a Motec System Exhaust.

Fatnino2• 4 years ago

Nope, it's still just a bucket of bolts kept running but just barely. It's now got a paperclip under the hood to keep the rad fan on and a couple of functional nickels under the dash as part of the breaking system.

jeffbee• 4 years ago

HN two days ago helped me identify a random electronic dingus in my Honda as a dealer-installed remote entry and remote start thing from a brand called "Karr" which is in all likelihood a complete piece of junk, security-wise. I'm not even going to get worked up over OEM implementation details if dealers are installing backdoors.

UncleOxidant• 4 years ago

Not my '98 Civic. Then again, pretty much any Honda key from that era can open up any Honda from that era - so it's not like Honda has ever been very concerned about security.

meatmanek• 4 years ago

Another recent Honda keyfob vulnerability: https://github.com/HackingIntoYourHeart/Unoriginal-Rice-Patt...

wallaBBB6• 4 years ago

That one claims (without sufficient proof) that Honda does not implement rolling code in the fobs, completely opposite of this article that implies a wrong re-synchronization strategy implemented on the vehicle side.

TheMagicHorsey• 4 years ago

As someone whose car windows were broken 7 times in 13 months in San Francisco, I hope all the criminals get this device. I never have anything in my car, and the idiots doing the smash and grabs could reduce both our headaches by just investing in this thing.

worik• 4 years ago

What is your chance of getting a modern car that does not have this sort of thing?

I do not want any wireless connections to my car, unless I add them

kojeovo2• 4 years ago

My '18 Subaru doesn't FWIW. Stick shift is a bit of a deterrent too

giobox2• 4 years ago

Subaru really sold a car without a remote locking key/fob in 2018?? Almost every Subaru ever in the past 10 years has a key with remote lock/unlock functionality just like the one in the Rolling-PWN example linked above. In North America you'd have to try really hard to buy the cheapest new car you could find to get a dumb key, and even then it probably has remote central locking and potential vulnerabilities to replay attacks.

Your chance of getting a new car any time in the last decade that has no remote central locking and no potential replay attack surface is very, very low - this attack vector has been proven in many car key fobs for a long time.

Rolling-PWN vulnerability affects all Honda vehicles

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