A 'replay attack' vulnerability has been discovered in specific Honda and Acura automobile models, allowing a nearby hacker to open the car and even start it from a short distance. The threat actor captures the RF signals transferred from the key fob to the automobile and resends them to gain control of the victim's car's remote keyless entry unit.
A hostile hacker can employ a replay attack to mislead a website or service into giving them access to the user by recycling the information used to identify the user. If a hacker can find and repeat a specific string of information, someone can use it to deceive a website into believing it was there, allowing anyone to get access to the online account.
Attackers might utilize CVE-2022-27254 to perform a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack, or more particularly a replay attack, in which someone intercepted and manipulated the RF signals sent from a remote key fob to the automobile, and then re-transmitted these signals at a later time to unlock the car at his leisure.
According to analysts, Blake Berry, Hong Liu, and Ruolin Zhou of the University of Massachusetts, as well as Cybereason Chief Security Officer Sam Curry, who discovered the vulnerability, the vulnerability in earlier models is mostly unaddressed. Honda owners, on the other hand, maybe able to defend themselves against such an attack.
The remote engine start portion of the problem is also demonstrated in a video supplied by the researchers, however, no technical details or proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code were published at the time.
The Honda Civic (LX, EX, EX-L, Touring, Si, and Type R) models from 2016 through 2020 are the most afflicted by this issue.
In a GitHub repository, Blake Berry explained it was also possible to change the intercepted commands and re-send them to get a completely different result.
According to the experts' recommendations, automotive manufacturers should include "rolling codes," also known as "hopping codes." This security method responds to each authentication request with a unique code, ensuring the codes cannot be "replayed" by an offender at a later time.
However, "At this moment, Honda has no plans to update older vehicles," the company stated. "It's crucial to remember this, while Honda is always improving security features as new models are released, motivated and technologically sophisticated thieves are striving to circumvent those safeguards."
When not in use, users should store the key fobs in signal-blocking 'Faraday pouches', however, this strategy won't prevent a determined attacker from eavesdropping on signals when the fob is utilized.
Consumers should choose Passive Keyless Entry (PKE) over Remote Keyless Entry (RKE), which makes it much tougher for an intruder to clone/read the signal due to the closeness they would need to be at to do so.
