Reverse Engineering Marine Engines: Make powerboats do your bidding
Alex Lorman
DEF CON 33 (backfill) · Day 1 · Main Stage
In this illuminating DEF CON talk, Alex Lorman unveils practical strategies for gaining autonomous control over marine engines, challenging the prevailing industry trend of heavily locked-down, proprietary systems. The presentation, titled "Reverse Engineering Marine Engines: Make powerboats do your bidding," demonstrates that despite manufacturers' efforts to prevent user modification—often citing legal liability and warranty concerns—it is surprisingly straightforward to interface with and command these powerful machines. Lorman's work is driven by a desire for open control and the enablement of marine autonomy, contrasting sharply with the "black box" approach favored by major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
AI review
Lorman found the elegant bypass that most people would miss: ignore the CAN rabbit hole entirely and just emulate the analog signals upstream of all the proprietary complexity. For a first-time DEF CON speaker, the research is unexpectedly tight — empirically validated across multiple platforms, with real hardware artifacts and a village setup to back it. The 'terrible disappointment' framing is exactly right: the best research conclusion is often that the scary problem is trivially solvable from a different angle.