Remote Exploitation of Nissan Leaf: Controlling Critical Body Elements from the Internet
Black Hat Asia 2025 · Day 1 · Briefings
This talk, presented by MK and Rad Modzman from Automotive PCA, details a comprehensive remote exploitation chain against a 2020 Nissan Leaf, enabling an attacker to gain full control over the vehicle's infotainment system and subsequently manipulate critical body elements from the internet. The researchers systematically uncovered and chained multiple vulnerabilities, starting with a Bluetooth-based remote code execution (RCE) on the infotainment unit, achieving persistence, bypassing secure boot mechanisms, and ultimately compromising an internal ECU responsible for CAN bus communication.
AI review
This is an absolutely critical piece of research demonstrating a full, internet-to-vehicle remote exploitation chain against a modern Nissan Leaf. The researchers meticulously chained multiple zero-days, from a Bluetooth RCE on the infotainment system, through a secure boot bypass, to arbitrary code execution on a critical RH850 microcontroller, ultimately allowing remote manipulation of safety-critical functions like steering and doors. This isn't just a technical deep-dive; it's a stark, uncomfortable warning to the entire automotive industry about profound architectural and implementation…