Hi John,

You may remember that I posted a little while ago asking whether some ECUs were uncrackable. The answer was basically anything can be done but it depends if it is really worth someones while.

Well it seems that in this context the Bosch ECU on the 2010 diesel BMWs cannot be tuned via the OBD. I'm hearing this again and again from different companies that are involved in BMW remapping.

One company can remap it but by taking the ECU out and soldering/wiring onto it to remap it.
Now I know any remap can be detected by the manufacturer if they really wanted to but is this sort of remap anymore detectable than one done via the OBD?
The company reckons there will be no physical marks left on the ECU to make it apparent to the naked eye that it has been tampered with.

I'd appreciate your input.

Thanks

 

I have no doubt that it could be tuned by OBD since the dealers will do this to do updates, but there will be heavy security on it that hasn't been cracked.

A "bench flash" like this can be sometimes less detectable than OBD flashes since you can use a lower level hardware flash, rather than going in through a factory protocol that may record a trace of your business with it.

There could be physical anti-tamper techniques as well, paint marks on screws, potting on boards, security fasteners etc.

 

Thanks John. So as long as you can avoid physical anti tamper measures the actual 'reflash' could actually be LESS detectable than one done via the OBD?

Btw, have you ever thought about turning your hand to cracking the security measures on a BMW ECU? Or is that not what you do?

 

ding have you tryed simon @ emaps

 

Hi Alan,

There is a thread running over on another forum at the moment where emaps is the preferred mapper. On that thread Simon also says that the ECU seems to be uncrackable and there is NOBODY even near to cracking it (ie via the OBD)

To be honest, my car wouldn't come for a couple of months, then I would want a few thousand miles on it before it was fiddled with. So that would probably take us to about May 2011. Then I might have even waited a bit longer, so I could have used the remap as something to keep me interested in the car as I started to get bored.

So there is another 6 months at least for them to crack it. The remap isn't the end of the world but its nice to know when you buy a car that there is another 50 BHP waiting for you if you want it.

I wouldn't mind having the bench reflash if that is all that is available, especially as it seems John is saying that (bar any physical anti temper devices) it could be less detectable than an OBD solution. The only downside is that it's a more expensive since one has to travel to the mapper to have it done.

 

Yes.

I'm not skilled with cryptography. The main stuff I have done is working out how the engine is controlled once someone else has worked out how to read/write the ECU memory via OBD.