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Nair stated emphatically that there is a “hard and fast” firewall between Sync and “mission critical systems” in the car. Wow I sure hope that's a dumbed-down

Nair stated emphatically that there is a “hard and fast” firewall between Sync and “mission critical systems” in the car. Wow I sure hope that's a dumbed-down explanation for the press, because I don't want my radio and (say) my ABS or traction control to have enough of a connection to each other to even establish any kind of "firewall" between them.

tdicola 12y ago
In a lot of cases there are multiple CAN or similar buses, like one for engine components, one for accessories, one for emissions (OBD2), etc. There definitely are valid concerns with malicious attacks, but they can be mitigated a bit by separating devices to different buses.
- emcrazyone 12y ago
  See my response above. There is a firewall. I won't divulge too many details other than what anyone can learn by simply disassembling a SYNC module but will say all software for SYNC must be signed and approved by Ford. The SYNC module has two CPUs. The Freescale iMX handles all the graphics and I think it was a V850 from Renesance that handles all vehicle bus communication. Between these two CPUs there is a firewall which restricts what the graphics processor (iMX) can & can't get out on the CAN bus. The communication is essentially proxied; 3rd party software doesn't have a direct connection to any vehicle network. And the concern is precisely as you said. They don't want 3rd party software setting off air bags as the inside joke always was.
deleted 12y ago
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phkahler 12y ago
>> Wow I sure hope that's a dumbed-down explanation for the press, because I don't want my radio and (say) my ABS or traction control to have enough of a connection to each other to even establish any kind of "firewall" between them. Don't worry. The airbag supplier is looking out for themselves and doesn't want anything screwing up their modules function. The engine controller and brake system are certainly connected via CAN but you're not going to reflash anything without using the correct protocol and having the right key for each controller. You also don't need to worry about buffer overflows or such because CAN is strictly limited to 8 byte (or less) packets and a 29bit message ID. Most messages define particular signals to be in those bytes and critical signals have checks run on them. And on and on... No, it's not perfect but I don't think you need to worry.
- jared314 12y ago
  > No, it's not perfect but I don't think you need to worry. You don't need to worry if, and only if, you assume that the standards are designed correctly and all vendors code to all the standards correctly. As Quviq found, you should not assume either of those things. http://vimeo.com/42751120 http://vimeo.com/42751120

tdicola 12y ago

In a lot of cases there are multiple CAN or similar buses, like one for engine components, one for accessories, one for emissions (OBD2), etc. There definitely are valid concerns with malicious attacks, but they can be mitigated a bit by separating devices to different buses.

emcrazyone 12y ago
See my response above. There is a firewall. I won't divulge too many details other than what anyone can learn by simply disassembling a SYNC module but will say all software for SYNC must be signed and approved by Ford. The SYNC module has two CPUs. The Freescale iMX handles all the graphics and I think it was a V850 from Renesance that handles all vehicle bus communication. Between these two CPUs there is a firewall which restricts what the graphics processor (iMX) can & can't get out on the CAN bus. The communication is essentially proxied; 3rd party software doesn't have a direct connection to any vehicle network. And the concern is precisely as you said. They don't want 3rd party software setting off air bags as the inside joke always was.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

phkahler 12y ago

>> Wow I sure hope that's a dumbed-down explanation for the press, because I don't want my radio and (say) my ABS or traction control to have enough of a connection to each other to even establish any kind of "firewall" between them. Don't worry. The airbag supplier is looking out for themselves and doesn't want anything screwing up their modules function. The engine controller and brake system are certainly connected via CAN but you're not going to reflash anything without using the correct protocol and having the right key for each controller. You also don't need to worry about buffer overflows or such because CAN is strictly limited to 8 byte (or less) packets and a 29bit message ID. Most messages define particular signals to be in those bytes and critical signals have checks run on them. And on and on... No, it's not perfect but I don't think you need to worry.

jared314 12y ago
> No, it's not perfect but I don't think you need to worry. You don't need to worry if, and only if, you assume that the standards are designed correctly and all vendors code to all the standards correctly. As Quviq found, you should not assume either of those things. http://vimeo.com/42751120 http://vimeo.com/42751120