Bug Hunter's Guide to Bashing for Car Hacking Bug Bashes
Jay Turla shares winning methodologies for automotive bug bashes, providing bug bounty hunters with hardware and firmware preparation blueprints.
Summary
The Rise of Automotive Bug Bounty Programs
Automotive manufacturers and Tier-1 suppliers increasingly host dedicated automotive bug bashes and live hacking events to identify connected vehicle vulnerabilities.
Preparation and Tooling for Live Vehicle Hacking
Jay Turla outlines essential hardware tools (CAN adapters, SDRs, logic analyzers) and software frameworks needed to audit target vehicles.
Common High-Impact Automotive Vulnerabilities
Turla reviews recurring bugs discovered during live bashes—including insecure UDS diagnostic services, hardcoded telematics API keys, and unauthenticated CAN commands.
Actionable Advice for Bug Bounty Hunters
The author provides triage strategies, report writing templates, and tips to maximize bounty earnings in automotive programs.
Related talks
Car Hacking Village·26 min
collin · oblivion
Reverse engineers a commercial odometer rollback tool, extracting locked STM32 firmware and showing how CAN messages are intercepted and rewritten.
Car Hacking Village·29 min
Wyatt Ford · Alex Reuter
Wyatt Ford and Alex Reuter investigate security weaknesses in Vehicle Diagnostic Adapters (VDAs) used on heavy commercial trucks, exploring firmware updates and attack surfaces.
Car Hacking Village·42 min
Marcelo Sacchetin
Introduces ChupaCarBrah, an open-source hardware and software platform for automotive CAN bus testing and exploration.


