Gabriel Cirlig & Stefan Tanase, Ixia

Given a relatively new car with an infotainment system completely decoupled from the car’s backbone (ignition, lights and such), we’re going to examine the data stored inside in hopes of finding relevant information about the user of the vehicle.

A proof-of-concept vehicle weaponization attack will be shown during this talk. By abusing various debug tools present on the car’s infotainment system, we demonstrate how a malicious attacker would be able to track the position of the car in real time, or even do wardriving and network exploitation from the on-board computer of the car.

We were able to extract call logs, text messages and phone contacts from all mobile devices connected to the car. More worryingly, the navigation system logs were left completely unobfuscated, allowing a potential attacker to track the driver’s habits very precisely. Another big concern is the relative ease with which we could weaponize the car and turn it into a passive wifi scanner for unprotected networks thanks to the plethora of onboard debugging tools present on the car’s infotainment system.