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Hacking Connected Cars: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures
A field manual on contextualizing cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and risks to connected cars through penetration testing and risk assessment
Hacking Connected Cars deconstructs the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used to hack into connected cars and autonomous vehicles to help you identify and mitigate vulnerabilities affecting cyber-physical vehicles. Written by a veteran of risk management and penetration testing of IoT devices and connected cars, this book provides a detailed account of how to perform penetration testing, threat modeling, and risk assessments of telematics control units and infotainment systems. This book demonstrates how vulnerabilities in wireless networking, Bluetooth, and GSM can be exploited to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability of connected cars.
Passenger vehicles have experienced a massive increase in connectivity over the past five years, and the trend will only continue to grow with the expansion of The Internet of Things and increasing consumer demand for always-on connectivity. Manufacturers and OEMs need the ability to push updates without requiring service visits, but this leaves the vehicle's systems open to attack. This book examines the issues in depth, providing cutting-edge preventative tactics that security practitioners, researchers, and vendors can use to keep connected cars safe without sacrificing connectivity.
Perform penetration testing of infotainment systems and telematics control units through a step-by-step methodical guide
Analyze risk levels surrounding vulnerabilities and threats that impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability
Conduct penetration testing using the same tactics, techniques, and procedures used by hackersFrom relatively small features such as automatic parallel parking, to completely autonomous self-driving cars--all connected systems are vulnerable to attack. As connectivity becomes a way of life, the need for security expertise for in-vehicle systems is becoming increasingly urgent. Hacking Connected Cars provides practical, comprehensive guidance for keeping these vehicles secure.
Hacking Connected Cars deconstructs the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used to hack into connected cars and autonomous vehicles to help you identify and mitigate vulnerabilities affecting cyber-physical vehicles. Written by a veteran of risk management and penetration testing of IoT devices and connected cars, this book provides a detailed account of how to perform penetration testing, threat modeling, and risk assessments of telematics control units and infotainment systems. This book demonstrates how vulnerabilities in wireless networking, Bluetooth, and GSM can be exploited to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability of connected cars.
Passenger vehicles have experienced a massive increase in connectivity over the past five years, and the trend will only continue to grow with the expansion of The Internet of Things and increasing consumer demand for always-on connectivity. Manufacturers and OEMs need the ability to push updates without requiring service visits, but this leaves the vehicle's systems open to attack. This book examines the issues in depth, providing cutting-edge preventative tactics that security practitioners, researchers, and vendors can use to keep connected cars safe without sacrificing connectivity.
Perform penetration testing of infotainment systems and telematics control units through a step-by-step methodical guide
Analyze risk levels surrounding vulnerabilities and threats that impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability
Conduct penetration testing using the same tactics, techniques, and procedures used by hackersFrom relatively small features such as automatic parallel parking, to completely autonomous self-driving cars--all connected systems are vulnerable to attack. As connectivity becomes a way of life, the need for security expertise for in-vehicle systems is becoming increasingly urgent. Hacking Connected Cars provides practical, comprehensive guidance for keeping these vehicles secure.
- GenresHackersTechnology
255 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 21, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 12, 2020
Pretty sure the last person who rated the book didn’t even read it! What an absurd way to look at Hacking Connected Cars. This book is AMAZING! I was constantly impressed with Alissa’s ability to teach the reader something new while also emphasizing fundamentals throughout the entire book. She provided in depth descriptions on how to accomplish a pen test on a connected car from start to finish, including detailed templates and personal experiences on what not to do.
If you are interested in pentesting, READ THIS BOOK! Hacking Connected Cars provides invaluable Information on the pentesting process itself, which are extremely important regardless of the type of assessment you are doing. You don’t have to be a car enthusiast to enjoy this book, but you do have to be ready for an excellent read that will tug on your hacking strings and make you want to dig a little deeper into all things connected to the cars of today.
If you are interested in pentesting, READ THIS BOOK! Hacking Connected Cars provides invaluable Information on the pentesting process itself, which are extremely important regardless of the type of assessment you are doing. You don’t have to be a car enthusiast to enjoy this book, but you do have to be ready for an excellent read that will tug on your hacking strings and make you want to dig a little deeper into all things connected to the cars of today.
June 5, 2020
Great for car enthusiasts and hackers alike
I was so impressed with the format and layout of this book. You don’t have to be a car expert to understand and appreciate the lessons shared, nor do you need to be an experienced hacker or security professional. In fact, I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking to get a start in penetration testing, as it teaches the right lessons and builds proper habits for approaching an engagement. Likewise, the section on risk assessments was one of the most clearly laid out approaches to practical risk assessments that I have come across. I expect I will be referring back to this book on many future occasions.
I was so impressed with the format and layout of this book. You don’t have to be a car expert to understand and appreciate the lessons shared, nor do you need to be an experienced hacker or security professional. In fact, I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking to get a start in penetration testing, as it teaches the right lessons and builds proper habits for approaching an engagement. Likewise, the section on risk assessments was one of the most clearly laid out approaches to practical risk assessments that I have come across. I expect I will be referring back to this book on many future occasions.
June 1, 2020
The mood is set by the Intro: a fear monger reminds the reader the end is near and the first death from Tesla has happened.
Steps, bag-full of initials, and rules. Once you get beyond the jargon, the book is pretty much crap. The talk is about POTENTIAL man in the middle attacks. It is about "not only" port scanning. It is about "open source intelligence". Military jargon is added to this mad man fantasy to make for a cute lecture for a new Hollywood script about killer cars and why people should be afraid of technology and embrace the horse pulled buggy.
Now, I am sure Knight knows a lot more than me and he can do things that I can't. But the book itself is hot air and opacity.
Steps, bag-full of initials, and rules. Once you get beyond the jargon, the book is pretty much crap. The talk is about POTENTIAL man in the middle attacks. It is about "not only" port scanning. It is about "open source intelligence". Military jargon is added to this mad man fantasy to make for a cute lecture for a new Hollywood script about killer cars and why people should be afraid of technology and embrace the horse pulled buggy.
Now, I am sure Knight knows a lot more than me and he can do things that I can't. But the book itself is hot air and opacity.
July 31, 2020
In the classic hacker movie, The Net, attackers hack the navigation system in the plane of one of the characters. It leads him to fly into a pole, leading to his death. That scene shows that nothing instills fear in the public like having planes hacked out of the sky.
Last year, IOActive security researcher Ruben Santamarta dropped a bombshell at the Black Hat 2019 conference that the Boeing Dreamliner is susceptible to hacking. While he left it as a theoretical threat, the media, not understanding the more in-depth technical and security issues involved, wrote it up as if the plane was in imminent danger. The fact is, as I wrote that the Dreamliner can’t be hacked out of the sky, or even in the air.
But what can be hacked today are computers on wheels, also known as cars. In Hacking Connected Cars: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (Wiley 978-1119491804), author Alissa Knight has written an engaging guide for those that want to understand some of the threats to, and how to hack into parts of connected cars and autonomous vehicles.
While the gold standard on the topic of car hacking is The Car Hacker’s Handbook: A Guide for the Penetration Tester, Knight provides the reader with a good overview of how one can both hack into specific systems in a connected car, and how to mitigate those vulnerabilities.
She opens the book with the notion that automotive cybersecurity is perhaps the most unique and challenging security problem that humankind has ever faced. While that observation may include more than a bit of hyperbole, it is debatable if the car manufacturers today are doing all they can to mitigate the many security risks. As Knight indicates, they certainly can do a better job. I would suggest they could do a significantly better job.
Today’s newer cars have evolved to a computer network on wheels, and they scream out to be hacked. And it is not just cars; every mode of transportation has networked systems. Even John Deere - the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker, holds that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.” Perhaps a future version of the book will be about hacking farm equipment.
The book is not a comprehensive guide to all aspects of a connected car, as it focuses mainly on the entertainment and information system, in addition to the telematic control unit (TCU), which is the system on the vehicle that controls its tracking.
Knight details how to use numerous hacking tools to perform penetration tests of these systems. But these are limited to these systems via wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.
In these autonomous vehicles, it is the controller area network (CAN bus) which allows all systems to interact and communicate. The book does not discuss hacking the CAN bus, where complete control of the vehicle could result in its complete takeover.
At 225 pages, the book provides a solid introduction to the topic. Some years ago, a car manual was under 50 pages. Now, Tesla manuals are larger than this book, indicating the complexity of today’s cars.
For those who want to gain a better understanding of what is going on under your car’s hood, and computer systems, Hacking Connected Cars is a good start to understand that network on wheels.
Last year, IOActive security researcher Ruben Santamarta dropped a bombshell at the Black Hat 2019 conference that the Boeing Dreamliner is susceptible to hacking. While he left it as a theoretical threat, the media, not understanding the more in-depth technical and security issues involved, wrote it up as if the plane was in imminent danger. The fact is, as I wrote that the Dreamliner can’t be hacked out of the sky, or even in the air.
But what can be hacked today are computers on wheels, also known as cars. In Hacking Connected Cars: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (Wiley 978-1119491804), author Alissa Knight has written an engaging guide for those that want to understand some of the threats to, and how to hack into parts of connected cars and autonomous vehicles.
While the gold standard on the topic of car hacking is The Car Hacker’s Handbook: A Guide for the Penetration Tester, Knight provides the reader with a good overview of how one can both hack into specific systems in a connected car, and how to mitigate those vulnerabilities.
She opens the book with the notion that automotive cybersecurity is perhaps the most unique and challenging security problem that humankind has ever faced. While that observation may include more than a bit of hyperbole, it is debatable if the car manufacturers today are doing all they can to mitigate the many security risks. As Knight indicates, they certainly can do a better job. I would suggest they could do a significantly better job.
Today’s newer cars have evolved to a computer network on wheels, and they scream out to be hacked. And it is not just cars; every mode of transportation has networked systems. Even John Deere - the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker, holds that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.” Perhaps a future version of the book will be about hacking farm equipment.
The book is not a comprehensive guide to all aspects of a connected car, as it focuses mainly on the entertainment and information system, in addition to the telematic control unit (TCU), which is the system on the vehicle that controls its tracking.
Knight details how to use numerous hacking tools to perform penetration tests of these systems. But these are limited to these systems via wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.
In these autonomous vehicles, it is the controller area network (CAN bus) which allows all systems to interact and communicate. The book does not discuss hacking the CAN bus, where complete control of the vehicle could result in its complete takeover.
At 225 pages, the book provides a solid introduction to the topic. Some years ago, a car manual was under 50 pages. Now, Tesla manuals are larger than this book, indicating the complexity of today’s cars.
For those who want to gain a better understanding of what is going on under your car’s hood, and computer systems, Hacking Connected Cars is a good start to understand that network on wheels.
December 26, 2022
Well written and covered
There is not many books on the topic of pen testing cars. This was a nice overview of the process and even the hardware and software you can use in order to hack into cars. No doubt this subject will be covered deeper as we move into an environment where all cars on the road are hosts on a network.
There is not many books on the topic of pen testing cars. This was a nice overview of the process and even the hardware and software you can use in order to hack into cars. No doubt this subject will be covered deeper as we move into an environment where all cars on the road are hosts on a network.
January 15, 2024
Alissa's assertion holds true – some prior knowledge undoubtedly enhances the reading experience. In fact certain knowledge is needed to understand these concepts and apply that knowledge to other areas.
I dont care for show-offy use of rare words like melange where the simpler and shorter word would get the point across.
This book covers a lot of ground, I like that, this could help lots of people expand their knowledge. I really like the message she sends: This is not everything, learn it, use it and contribute back to the community.. ++++ a message that can work in many other places!
I dont care for show-offy use of rare words like melange where the simpler and shorter word would get the point across.
This book covers a lot of ground, I like that, this could help lots of people expand their knowledge. I really like the message she sends: This is not everything, learn it, use it and contribute back to the community.. ++++ a message that can work in many other places!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews