The finger pointed right at Bosch

[GMPX]

A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats....
Story HERE (https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/05/volkswagen-bosch-fiat-diesel-emissions-cheats-cracked-open-in-new-research/)

[Dmaxink]

Interesting!

[GMC-2002-Dmax]

Them Germans sure know how to engineer stuff..........LOL

[sn00py]

Yes, this was the point I was trying to make the other day. Unencrypted ECU code is relatively straight-forward to perform static analysis against. What about encrypted ECU code? Bosch isn't going to make that mistake again, lol.

[GMPX]

And probably the worst part for them is the 'cheat' routines will just be compiled with every core EDC17 software build regardless of which manufacturer it is for, sort of like guilt by association even though others never asked for it.

[joecar]

Their cheat code has lots of momentum.

~ posted by phone ~

[Doc]

Their cheat code has lots of momentum.

~ posted by phone ~

This might be nebulous for most but for those of us in North East Florida the direct impact of this situation was the shutting down of our local 1/8th mile track. VW offered 16x as much money per sq ft as the track owners for the leased land so they could stage the recalled vehicles on the property. In this politically correct world it was truly amazing to "see" a track being allowed to start up and thrive for four years and sickening to "see" it get the plug pulled for the most outrageous of reasons. One would think noise, a series of accidents or the walking dead would be the end of it rather than this.

[sn00py]

This might be nebulous for most but for those of us in North East Florida the direct impact of this situation was the shutting down of our local 1/8th mile track. VW offered 16x as much money per sq ft as the track owners for the leased land so they could stage the recalled vehicles on the property. In this politically correct world it was truly amazing to "see" a track being allowed to start up and thrive for four years and sickening to "see" it get the plug pulled for the most outrageous of reasons. One would think noise, a series of accidents or the walking dead would be the end of it rather than this.

I hear ya brother. That is happening all over the country, sadly. Where I'm at, the land the local tracks sit on could generate far more revenue serving other purposes than collecting racer entry fees, hosting sanctioned race events and constantly fighting off neighboring property owners and other regulatory bodies which have a distaste for the racing culture.

[Snipesy]

They really shouldn't have to dig as hard as they are. Where are the subpoenas?

[sn00py]

They really shouldn't have to dig as hard as they are. Where are the subpoenas?

Who are going to be the expert witnesses to interpret the code? The Bosch engineers?

[GMPX]

Read the story in the link, they don't need experts from Bosch, documents leaked out of Bosch on how it works, reverse engineers confirmed it.

[sn00py]

Read the story in the link, they don't need experts from Bosch, documents leaked out of Bosch on how it works, reverse engineers confirmed it.

Respectfully speaking, the fact Bosch's future roadmap includes a CPU architecture that allows for dynamic decryption of EEPROM contents allows them, at the very least, a greater level of security against future reverse engineering, and possible future IP leaks allows them to hit two birds with one stone: stopping aftermarket recalibration, and hamstringing future reverse engineering efforts to determine what they may do in their software. They've learned from this experience. ;-)

Sadly, the ability to do what we do will suffer.

[GMPX]

Yes I agree with that, by 2020 I expect after market tuning will be a distant memory for many brands.

[joecar]

One lesson is this: don't document any questionable features.


~ posted by phone ~

[ScarabEpic22]

Yes I agree with that, by 2020 I expect after market tuning will be a distant memory for many brands.

:( Not cool, means that aftermarket ECU/ECMs will become the only option. And ones that keep some factory creature comforts are already pricey...


One lesson is this: don't document any questionable features.


~ posted by phone ~

Lol

[GMPX]

:( Not cool, means that aftermarket ECU/ECMs will become the only option. And ones that keep some factory creature comforts are already pricey...l
Yeah I know, I am only making that assumption based on the new CPU's that they'll start using that have been designed around preventing tampering and GM at least tend to have about a 5 or 6 year life cycle on ECM's before the next model starts to appear. That would mean for the E92, E80 etc they are just a few years off being replaced if their replacement time lines continue as they've always done.

[sn00py]

Yeah I know, I am only making that assumption based on the new CPU's that they'll start using that have been designed around preventing tampering and GM at least tend to have about a 5 or 6 year life cycle on ECM's before the next model starts to appear. That would mean for the E92, E80 etc they are just a few years off being replaced if their replacement time lines continue as they've always done.

If there's a glimmer of hope in this regard, it's that in the case of the T87A they basically took identical hardware and applied the digital signatures to a unit that otherwise had very minor hardware changes from T87. This suggests they COULD do this to any existing ECU (E80, E92, et al) but have stopped short of doing so, with the obvious exception of the E41 (which IS an entirely new design, but related to the E98).

Perhaps for the time being, they just wanted people out of the diesels (both engine and transmission - and gas A8/A9/A10s transmissions were collateral damage). Also, there's other NEW GM ECU designs that have come to market for 2017 that have not employed the digital signatures.

Hard to say, it's like reading tea leaves.

[ScarabEpic22]

Especially when the E38/E67 were used for almost 10 years and the T43 is still being used (2005 was first IIRC), there's still hope as sn00py pointed out. But who knows, it's definitely up to GM's whims. I bet there some KPIs around warranty claims and associated costs behind their decision...

[GMPX]

Perhaps for the time being, they just wanted people out of the diesels (both engine and transmission - and gas A8/A9/A10s transmissions were collateral damage).
This is exactly what I was thinking myself, well put.