Vulnerabilities in Lexus and Toyota cars could be exploited by hackers to launch remote attacks against affected vehicles, researchers at China-based Tencent Keen Security Lab discovered.
Research into the AVN (Audio, Visual and Navigation) system in the 2017 Lexus NX300 — the same system is also used in other models, including LS and ES series — has revealed security issues with the Bluetooth and vehicular diagnosis functions on the car.
According to Keen Security Lab, these flaws could be abused to compromise the AVN and internal CAN network and related electronic control units (ECUs).
Furthermore, the researchers said they were able to wirelessly take control of the AVN unit without user interaction, then inject malicious CAN messages to cause the car to perform “physical actions.”
However, the specific technical details related to these vulnerabilities will be disclosed only next year, the researchers say.
The Lexus AVN consists of the DCU (Display Control Unit) and MEU (Multimedia Extension Unit for maps), with the main board of the DCU exposing attack surfaces such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB interfaces. The DCU also communicates with the internal ECUs via CAN messages.
The Chinese researchers leveraged two vulnerabilities to target the in-vehicle Bluetooth service and achieve remote code execution in the DCU system with root privileges.
The issues include an out-of-bound heap memory read and a heap buffer overflow, both residing in the process of creating Bluetooth connections before pairing. Because of these bugs, Bluetooth exploitation is “absolutely touch-less and interaction-less at close proximity,” Keen Security Lab explains.
The Bluetooth MAC address of an affected car can be sniffed over the air using the well-known “Ubertooth One” device, if the D ..
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