CANDY CREAM - Hacking infotainment android systems to command instrument cluster via can data frame

Modern vehicles functionalities are regulated by Electronic Control Units (ECU), from a few tens to a hundred, commonly interconnected through the Controller Area Network (CAN) communication protocol. CAN is not secure-by-design: authentication, integrity and confidentiality are not considered in the design and implementation of the protocol. This represents one of the main vulnerability of modern vehicle: getting the access (physical or remote) to CAN communication allows a possible malicious entity to inject unauthorised messages on the CAN bus. These messages may lead to unexpected and possible very dangerous behaviour of the target vehicle. In this paper, we present CANDY CREAM, an attack made of two parts: CANDY aiming at exploiting a vulnerability exposed by an infotainment system based on Android operating system connected to the vehicle's CAN bus network, and CREAM, a post-exploitation script that injects customized CAN frame to alter the behaviour of the vehicle.