Exactly. ECUs are notoriously closed-source and communicate using opaque and proprietary protocols, especially since vast swaths of them aren't even managed by the auto manufacturers (Honda et al just buy ECUs, do some cursory functionality verification, and off it goes).

Fuck infotainment in cars, at least until self-driving cars become ubiquitous. Nowadays it's common to have a dozen ECUs in any car made in the past three years.

The security in these ECUs is definitely a concern, especially since lots of them have 3G/LTE radios in them. And there are hundreds of thousands of these cars, everywhere across the planet. It's a massive attack surface that definitely needs attention well before self-driving cars get rolled out to consumers.

Agree. I was seriously frustrated recently while trying to get a friend's car to tell me why the brake warning light was on. Turns out a proprietary scan tool is necessary. A used one on Ebay cost $500.

Modern computer-controlled cars are incomprehensible to many traditional mechanics, but I bet the average HN member wouldn't have too much trouble understanding the code that runs the computer-controlled mechanical systems of a car.