The Car Hacker’s Handbook: Understanding Automotive Security, CAN Bus Vulnerabilities, and Vehicle Hacking Techniques

Modern cars are more computerized than ever, packed with infotainment and navigation systems, wireless connectivity, automatic software updates, advanced driver assistance features, and countless embedded controllers working behind the scenes. These technologies are designed to make driving safer, more comfortable, and more convenient. Yet while vehicle complexity has increased dramatically, automotive security has not always evolved at the same pace. As a result, many modern vehicles operate in an increasingly hostile security environment, exposing millions of cars to potential attacks that were unthinkable just a decade ago.

The Car Hacker’s Handbook offers a deep and practical exploration of the computer systems, embedded software, and communication networks that power today’s vehicles. It begins by breaking down common automotive vulnerabilities and explaining how electronic control units communicate over the CAN bus and other internal networks. Once you understand how vehicle systems exchange data, the book guides you through real-world techniques for intercepting traffic and executing targeted attacks, including tracking vehicles, unlocking doors, disrupting engine behavior, flooding networks, and more.

Emphasizing low-cost, open-source tools such as Metasploit, Wireshark, Kayak, can-utils, and ChipWhisperer, the book shows you how to build realistic threat models, reverse engineer CAN messages, exploit diagnostic and logging interfaces, hack ECU firmware, and inject attacks through infotainment and vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems. It also explains how to override factory configurations using performance-tuning methods and how to build both physical and virtual test benches to safely experiment with exploits.

Whether you are an engineer, security researcher, or technically curious reader, The Car Hacker’s Handbook is an essential starting point for understanding automotive security—and for learning how a two-ton computer on wheels can be analyzed, tested, and, ultimately, protected. More information…