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- Hacker News
- Maybe turning cars into gigantic computers on wheels was a bad thing? more study required.by Kapura
- Seeing more and more projects eschew code docs with the idea that "well architected code can be queried by LLMs" and stick to more functional runbook style docs. It really is unlikely that at any given point all of the docs of a project are up to date with the code.
I'm generally aligned with this, but it is predicated on the whole "well architected" code part.
by hankbond - I'd rather see unit tests as documentation.
The test can show intended use, show interesting corner cases, and I know it is up to date because it is constantly running and passing.
I think that is a huge underrated benefit of adding a lot more testing.
If I think a developer is going to ask a question of how something works, or about a corner case, isn't that deserving of a test, so they can just see proof of the answer to their question immediately rather than trying to re-derive it?
by jmalicki - It's difficult for car manufacturer theese days. You do proper security with secure boot etc. and the reverse engineering homebrew community complains about no way to install own software. You use the public known test key that everyone can do homebrew stuff when he wants, the reverse engineering homebrew community calls it a security risk.
In my opinion this auther don't know what he wants.
by krater23 - Wonder how good the rest of the security is. The head unit is likely hooked up to a CAN gateway, can it call into telematics. Maybe find some novel way to abuse carplay/aa to call home.by hnav
- If you have physical access to a car and want to phone home, may I recommend leaving a gps tracking device under the floormat.
It works on more brands of cars too than just one gen of honda civics, and probably quicker to install.
by TheDong - This is great information, thank you for posting!
I think there is a line between security, and keeping a device useful in the long term. I think the threat of people installing listening malware on the car via an evil-maid type attack is low.
However, when these cars are 10+ years old, and are in the hands of those willing to tinker, I think the ability to open up the software and customize will be a great thing. Hopefully communities form around creating modifications they find useful, and prolongs the life of the devices.
Seems much better than the end-users ripping out the factory head unit to install the Aliexpress "Android Tablet" style units, which likely have much worse security and engineering than the Honda units they'd be replacing.
by mrbuttons454 - The framing of this article sucks.
It is rather cool that you can hack your own car that easily. Framing it like "the evil valet" gives incentive and excuse to the manufacturer to lock down everything. While a real 3 letter agency evil valet will not car anyway. There is an endless list of things that it can do anyway, like put microphone in 100 places, change the electronic, get the key from the manufacturer, add man in the middle devices,...
by greatgib - full ackby krater23
- IMHO this is a good sign(!?) that they didn't even think about locking down their systems against the owner.by userbinator
- Surely due to incompetence rather than hacker friendliness though?
Otherwise they would have had something like an unlockable bootloader where you need a special key to unlock it, or something difficult to access switch or something like that.
by IshKebab - It's not good that they allow anyone that happens to be in your car briefly root access. It'd be live having an always-on laptop in your office with a open shell on it.
They should have provided some mechanism for the real owner to approve updates if the updates aren't all trusted by default.
by varenc - I wish other car makers were as reasonable as Honda here.
No "evil valet" with half a brain cell would waste time hacking the head unit if they have physical access to the car. They would simply hide a spying device somewhere in the car.
Not to mention that people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies.
by hahamaster - You think there isn’t some boring scientist or engineer with classified access who doesn’t drive a boring civic to work?by newsclues
- Not sure if you’re being sarcastic/satirical or not. If you are, fine.
But if you’re not - why would someone driving a civic not be a target of an intelligence agency? It’s one of the most common cars about there, so if you want to fade into the background it’s a perfect car. Also, lots of otherwise “normal” people - scientists, engineers, journalists, lawyers - likely drive Honda civics.
A spying device hidden in the car may be found. Something installed directly within the car’s firmware is somewhat less likely to be found.
by saaaaaam - I'm hoping this comment is a joke? It's kind of nonsensical.
> I wish other car makers were as reasonable as Honda here.
I doubt they did this on purpose.
> No "evil valet" with half a brain cell would waste time hacking the head unit if they have physical access to the car.
Keep in mind that head units usually also contain historic data; stuff like left-over synced phone contacts in SQLite databases, historic location data collected either explicitly for telemetry or accidentally in log files etc.
Additionally, head units usually have access to a lot of internal buses in a car; depending on manufacturer there's sometimes some level of firewalling effort, for example through a Gateway module, but these firewalls are usually quite weak when they are present at all (see: the famous thing with Honda unlock and starter release working with no cryptographic material through the same CAN bus as the headlights). This means that the infotainment can usually control some part of the car, and is much more powerful than a tracking device.
Plus, implanting code (or just extracting the data that's already there) from a head unit leaves much less evidence than adding an additional tracker.
> Not to mention that people with Civics are never targets of three letter agencies.
???
by bri3d - In one thread people fighting the ever decreasing amount of hw ownership of most devices in our lives and when we have one that is more open, the crowds come to attack that too.
The theat model with tech has always been that if an attacker has physical access to the device and time then it's game over.
by xandrius - That doesn’t mean you don’t bother to secure the local device. I strongly suspect you have login security in your physical devices. Maybe even full disk encryption.
Just because a sufficiently advanced and determined attacker can own any device with physical access doesn’t mean we might as well make it easy for anyone.
by brookst - We can definitely see that on windows with the recent bitlocker exploit. I wonder if any new cases will be solved, or people imprisoned because of hardware in storage that can now be unlocked.
It's definitely better to not keep data locally if it's going to be seized, because of varying laws that can coerce unlocking, but in the U.S., it should be safe to refuse to give up passwords.
On the technical side, Google and Apple have changed the game with numerous improvements to physical security and GrapheneOS takes it even further building on their foundation reducing attack surface and adding good features. Particularly with Auto reboot[1] becoming widely adopted, your conclusion can be modified on phones.
[2]:
>This (https://osservatorionessuno.org/blog/2026/05/demystifying-ph...) is an article by an Italian non-profit that provides an introductive technical overview to forensic phone unlocking exploit kits used by governments and law enforcement, most notably Cellebrite.
>This post provides an overview on how disk encryption works on Android, common attack vectors used by forensic tools to brute force or extract a device, their countermeasures against popular security features like automatic reboot in iOS and how you can protect yourself against such tools, including several mentions about GrapheneOS.
[1] https://grapheneos.org/features#auto-reboot
[2] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/35728-demystifying-phone-un...
by Cider9986 - Because it's not open for modification by the general public? (emphasis general, not just technically minded people)
Manufacturers need to pick a lane - either fully open, and then people who need it can harden their own stuff (and at least be aware of the tradeoff), or fully closed and secure.
This in-between where cars are invasive privacy nightmares that spy on you at all driving hours, and are insecure nightmares that will give up that data to anyone remotely invested, is the worst case scenario, obviously.
by Aerolfos - I’ve heard product managers proudly proclaim their firmware was signed using the corporate internal signing service (good).
Of course, the question explicitly being asked (related to internal mandate) was if the firmware was signed — not if the firmware update process actually checked the signature (it certainly did not).
by BobbyTables2 - I'm surprised someone named BobbyTables2 wouldn't go straight for the proper way to check email PGP signatures...by mschulkind
- I once came across a similar "solution". The signing algorithm was directly executed from the update package. How would we otherwise be able to update the signature algorithm? Worst part was that it was correct at some point. It was an introduced regression because of a signature change due to " post-quantum safe" signatures now being required by the security team.by Koffiepoeder
- Most (if not all) cars on the road are terrible in terms of the security of the infotainment system and other onboard electronics. What makes this even worse is the sensors they have onboard these days; the microphones, cameras, GNSS receivers, wifi and BT radios make them into mobile surveillance platforms.
In March 2026, a bunch of controls were added to the Australian Government Information Security Manual[0] basically instructing people to not connect government devices to the infotainment systems of any vehicles, or to view or discuss anything sensitive in the presence of one.
> Security Control: 2099; Revision: 0; Updated: Mar-26; Marking: NC, OS, P, S, TS Mobile devices are not connected to the infotainment systems of connected vehicles.
> Security Control: 2100; Revision: 0; Updated: Mar-26; Marking: NC, OS, P, S, TS Sensitive or classified data is not viewed on mobile devices within or near connected vehicles.
> Security Control: 2101; Revision: 0; Updated: Mar-26; Marking: NC, OS, P, S, TS Sensitive or classified phone calls and conversations are not conducted within or near connected vehicles.
[0] https://www.cyber.gov.au/business-government/asds-cyber-secu...
by bigfatkitten - They’re fine. It’s a car radio, not a critical system.
The people who are vulnerable to this type of attack have procedures and trusted equipment to conduct their business (or not). US police agencies have had rules like this for rental cars since OnStar came out.
Most of the dangerous telematics information for the average person is offered for sale anyway.
by Spooky23 - Isn't NC the absolute lowest in the sensitivity system?by shakna
- To update 10th-gen Honda Civics, Honda ships updates on specially-formatted USB drives. They're essentially Android 4.2.2rc1-era recovery packages with some Honda-added version checks (which can be spoofed). The packages are signed with the publicly-known AOSP test key, so with physical access to the front USB port you can sign and flash your own package for arbitrary code execution on the headunit. This doesn't require root/su. I've run it end-to-end on my own 2021 Civic and separately confirmed an official EU update file carries the AOSP test-key signature. Tooling and writeup in the post.by librick
- beautifully done.by Kapura
- Hey, how did you obtain the update file? I’ve been trying to probe an Acura head unit from the same year, it’s also on Android 4.x, but have ran into a roadblock when it comes to obtaining an update file.
- > AOSP
Android Open Source Project
for those outside the bubble!
by DANmode