SecTor 2025 | CAN Bus for Car Nerds and Security People Who Should Know Better

In the world of custom car builds, knowing how to turn a wrench is only half the battle — the other half is figuring out why your 700hp engine swap won’t talk to the dash, the AC won’t work, and the wipers have developed a mind of their own. The answer, nine times out of ten? The CAN (Controller Area Network) bus.

So why are we talking about this at SecTor? Because reverse-engineering CAN is shockingly familiar territory: wire-level protocols, undocumented messages, weird vendor quirks, and the occasional “why did they do it that way?” moment. Sound familiar?

This session is a crash course in CAN for people who know what a packet sniffer is, even if they’ve never built a drift car. We’ll cover:
• What CAN bus is and how it works (without turning it into an EE lecture)
• How to reverse-engineer vehicle signals with tools like SavvyCAN, cansniffer, and your favorite logic analyzer
• Real-world hacks like tricking factory gauges into working with aftermarket ECUs
• Making analog sensors speak fluent CAN
• Getting digital clusters, body control modules, and even climate systems to play nice

And when all else fails? We’ll talk about workarounds, black-boxing, and why sometimes, the answer really is “just cut the wire.”
Whether you’re doing an EV swap, dropping a Hellcat into a 1970s pickup, or just want to understand how thieves steal F-150s by hotwiring the headlight — this session is for you.

Brian Bourne | Co-Founder, SecTor

Presentation Materials Available at:
https://blackhat.com/sector/2025/briefings/schedule/?#can-bus-for-car-nerds-and-security-people-who-should-know-better-48994Black HatRead More