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

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Presented at SecTor 2025 by

Brian Bourne

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 niceAnd 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.