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      09-26-2020, 09:27 PM   #23
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It's kind of circular. When the f platforms first came out no one was able to crack the ECU. It took about 3-4 years if I remember. That's why there were so many piggybacks in the market as tuning solutions. I suspect this will be the same. We'll see piggybacks come back, then someone will figure out the security features on the ECU, flash tunes will be back, then the manufacturer will find a new way to lock everyone out.
While I like your optimism, the supposed change by Bosch is much much much more complex than past lock outs. If what ECUTEK is saying is true, it will take someone to understand this at the block level and figure out a workaround to tune it. And those engineers don't work for tuners they work for the chipmakers and design houses.
There's lots of great hackers out there that like a good puzzle, but few if any are interested in making cars go faster.
100% agree. You really need someone at Bosch or ARM (or whatever supplier they used) who is a car enthusiast who is on the project and is okay with the personal risk of leaking highly confidential tech. That would be the quickest/cleanest way. Other than that, it's going to take an enthusiast who is really good/dedicated and has A LOT of spare time.
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      09-27-2020, 03:41 AM   #24
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I used to care but really don't anymore... my 135i was FBO on e85 and trapped 122 mph but it didn't exactly make it a good all around car. These cars come from the factory and come with optimal parameters as is... my slower M2 makes me happier, in the end we are all just waiting for the electric revolution. Cars have gotten super fast and the speed has a very diminishing point of return at this point.
Nonsense... there's nothing like spinning tires in 3rd gear. A car can never be 'too fast'.
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      10-29-2020, 09:50 PM   #25
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Any updates on this?

I'm curious as it appears the Zupra/B58 engine control module, which is also a recent product, is being "tuned" without too much issue. Makes me think the new controls have already been circumvented, or that engine management isn't as protected for whatever reason (but it is a new BMW product).
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      10-29-2020, 11:50 PM   #26
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Originally Posted by MovingChicane View Post
Any updates on this?

I'm curious as it appears the Zupra/B58 engine control module, which is also a recent product, is being "tuned" without too much issue. Makes me think the new controls have already been circumvented, or that engine management isn't as protected for whatever reason (but it is a new BMW product).
this would only affect the brand new 2021 Supras. I don't believe the original 2020 was locked.
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      10-30-2020, 03:32 AM   #27
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Wait a minute... wasn't one of the main emphasis of the new Supra was that it was made to be tuner friendly?


Edit- Also if anyone knows/has experience if this affects MY21 M2's please let us know. Thanks.
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      10-30-2020, 07:07 AM   #28
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One thing I haven't seen mentioned is what effect this will have on "older" cars that are tunable. I would imagine this will make them a little more attractive to the tuner community which should increase values a touch, or at least slow the depreciation curve.
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      10-30-2020, 10:19 AM   #29
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Originally Posted by HODLM View Post
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is what effect this will have on "older" cars that are tunable. I would imagine this will make them a little more attractive to the tuner community which should increase values a touch, or at least slow the depreciation curve.
I agree. a tuneable car will have much more value going forward. assuming no cost effective work around is found, who the fuck is going to why to put a custom ECU in a brand new car?
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      10-30-2020, 10:22 AM   #30
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Originally Posted by Spider. View Post
Wait a minute... wasn't one of the main emphasis of the new Supra was that it was made to be tuner friendly?


Edit- Also if anyone knows/has experience if this affects MY21 M2's please let us know. Thanks.

Well, that was the load of shit they told people about why the car had fake vents, and bolt holes for parts that it didn't have lol.

seriously though, if I bought a supra and it was locked like this, I'd be so pissed RN.

I expect we'll see a lot more of this star popping up on the new G series M cars.
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      10-30-2020, 10:54 AM   #31
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Originally Posted by Spider. View Post
Wait a minute... wasn't one of the main emphasis of the new Supra was that it was made to be tuner friendly?


Edit- Also if anyone knows/has experience if this affects MY21 M2's please let us know. Thanks.
I just received this from the guys at PTF:

June 21, 2020 is the earliest cutoff date, for now. DMEs produced after June 21 cannot be bench-unlocked.

Unfortunately the only way they can check for sure is to know the DME production date which is located on the DME sticker. This requires removing the DME. Ahhh!

My car was built in July 2020... so now I am lost in limbo knowing if I can tune my car or not.
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      10-30-2020, 12:12 PM   #32
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Can we also get this thread moved to the S55 tuning threat so it gets the suited attention?

Thanks
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      10-30-2020, 01:23 PM   #33
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This sounds a lot like what's been implemented as an industry standard in IT for servers and even client end points. If so than it's extremely difficult and highly unlikely anyone will be able to hack it.

Deep dive...
Computers have always been vulnerable to malware, hackers, etc. and to get around that a lot of "layers" of security have been implemented. At first this was a virus scanner to find and remove them, but that wasn't enough, because most computers were networked and so it was a game of Whac-A-Mole. Next came running personal firewalls on computers to help prevent unauthorized connections, then you saw virus scanners do real time scanning, etc. But even then if you lost or someone stole your computer they could access data on it. A password just prevents login, but the data is still easily accessible. This is when drive encryption came into play so that even the data was unreadable. Great, it's fully secured now. Well, not really. There are always bugs and holes that have yet to be discovered that can give you a backdoor into a system. So that's when secure boot started to be implemented. It basically runs on the systems hardware (not OS) and checks if the bootloader or system files have been tampered with before allowing the system to boot up. This really locks down not only the OS, but the entire system from any tampering. Some of them even require a secure transmission via network to servers that validate everything is good before the system can boot up. If it fails the system will simply not start. It won't let you use any bootable media on the system either and too many attempts to try to circumvent it will cause the system to lock itself out completely.

I suspect this is similar to what Bosch is doing with these new ECU's. I cannot stress how difficult and practically impossible this is to defeat. Maybe a flaw will show up that can allow access, but it's unlikely. With this many layers of security it's damn hard to crack. The only other ways to get in that I can think of is to gain access to the actual security validation systems, but that is unlikely and would put anyone trying that in jail. They could attempt to image the ECU and perform brute force on the images, but this is so hard to do and requires specialty equipment which can run emulators, etc. that it's also highly unlikely. The last option is to use a custom aftermarket ECU, but that has it's own challenges.

TLDR: This will likely be the death of tuning.
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      10-30-2020, 01:33 PM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tag View Post
This sounds a lot like what's been implemented as an industry standard in IT for servers and even client end points. If so than it's extremely difficult and highly unlikely anyone will be able to hack it.

Deep dive...
Computers have always been vulnerable to malware, hackers, etc. and to get around that a lot of "layers" of security have been implemented. At first this was a virus scanner to find and remove them, but that wasn't enough, because most computers were networked and so it was a game of Whac-A-Mole. Next came running personal firewalls on computers to help prevent unauthorized connections, then you saw virus scanners do real time scanning, etc. But even then if you lost or someone stole your computer they could access data on it. A password just prevents login, but the data is still easily accessible. This is when drive encryption came into play so that even the data was unreadable. Great, it's fully secured now. Well, not really. There are always bugs and holes that have yet to be discovered that can give you a backdoor into a system. So that's when secure boot started to be implemented. It basically runs on the systems hardware (not OS) and checks if the bootloader or system files have been tampered with before allowing the system to boot up. This really locks down not only the OS, but the entire system from any tampering. Some of them even require a secure transmission via network to servers that validate everything is good before the system can boot up. If it fails the system will simply not start. It won't let you use any bootable media on the system either.

I suspect this is similar to what Bosch is doing with these new ECU's. I cannot stress how difficult and practically impossible this is to defeat. Maybe a flaw will show up that can allow access, but it's unlikely. With this many layers of security it's damn hard to crack. The only other ways to get in that I can think of is to gain access to the actual security validation systems to get in, but that is unlikely and would put anyone trying that in jail. They could attempt to image the ECU and perform brute force on the images, but this is so hard to do and requires specialty equipment which can run emulators, etc. that it's also highly unlikely. The last option is to use a custom aftermarket ECU, but that has it's own challenges.

TLDR: This will likely be the death of tuning.
Ah c'mon man... please don't be so negative I am desperately hoping this isn't the case and they'll find a way around it. It doesn't matter how good security is, it always gets broken, eventually. The main problem is the incentive to break the security. Money talks. Unless there is serious money to be made to find a way around this it won't happen. We'll see. I'm yet to find out if my ECU is locked but I suspect it is. Last thing I want to do is revert to piggybacks though.
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      10-30-2020, 01:43 PM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NathObeaN View Post
Ah c'mon man... please don't be so negative I am desperately hoping this isn't the case and they'll find a way around it. It doesn't matter how good security is, it always gets broken, eventually. The main problem is the incentive to break the security. Money talks. Unless there is serious money to be made to find a way around this it won't happen. We'll see. I'm yet to find out if my ECU is locked but I suspect it is. Last thing I want to do is revert to piggybacks though.
Not being negative, just laying it out. Hate to say it, but they could implement methods that would even block a piggyback. It's not that hard to do if they decide to go that route in the future.
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      10-30-2020, 01:48 PM   #36
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Originally Posted by NathObeaN View Post
Ah c'mon man... please don't be so negative I am desperately hoping this isn't the case and they'll find a way around it. It doesn't matter how good security is, it always gets broken, eventually. The main problem is the incentive to break the security. Money talks. Unless there is serious money to be made to find a way around this it won't happen. We'll see. I'm yet to find out if my ECU is locked but I suspect it is. Last thing I want to do is revert to piggybacks though.
Not being negative, just laying it out. Hate to say it, but they could implement methods that would even block a piggyback. It's not that hard to do if they decide to go that route in the future.
I've already conceded to the fact I will have to get an electric car in the future... just let me have a final send off in my ICE swan song lol. Truth is, there is an awful lot of money in the tuning industry still. I imagine someone, somewhere, will get a big payout to find a workaround. Fingers crossed.
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      10-30-2020, 02:21 PM   #37
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NathObeaN View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spider. View Post
Wait a minute... wasn't one of the main emphasis of the new Supra was that it was made to be tuner friendly?


Edit- Also if anyone knows/has experience if this affects MY21 M2's please let us know. Thanks.
I just received this from the guys at PTF:

June 21, 2020 is the earliest cutoff date, for now. DMEs produced after June 21 cannot be bench-unlocked.

Unfortunately the only way they can check for sure is to know the DME production date which is located on the DME sticker. This requires removing the DME. Ahhh!

My car was built in July 2020... so now I am lost in limbo knowing if I can tune my car or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NathObeaN View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spider. View Post
Wait a minute... wasn't one of the main emphasis of the new Supra was that it was made to be tuner friendly?


Edit- Also if anyone knows/has experience if this affects MY21 M2's please let us know. Thanks.
I just received this from the guys at PTF:

June 21, 2020 is the earliest cutoff date, for now. DMEs produced after June 21 cannot be bench-unlocked.

Unfortunately the only way they can check for sure is to know the DME production date which is located on the DME sticker. This requires removing the DME. Ahhh!

My car was built in July 2020... so now I am lost in limbo knowing if I can tune my car or not.
I'm in the exact same boat with my comp produced in July 2020.

And well, I really wasn't planning on tuning the car within warranty so that gives about 4 years for a possible solution.

Til then, just enjoy the car how BMW intended it to be from factory. It's really is more than enough to get you in plenty of trouble
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      10-30-2020, 07:31 PM   #38
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What about using an ecu from another donor car that was totaled?
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      10-31-2020, 12:28 PM   #39
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      10-31-2020, 12:40 PM   #40
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This is probably an unpopular opinion, but if a programer/tuner really has skills, they're not doing aftermarket stuff. An ECU is just a computer.
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      10-31-2020, 01:23 PM   #41
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This is probably an unpopular opinion, but if a programer/tuner really has skills, they're not doing aftermarket stuff. An ECU is just a computer.
What makes you say that? I have no doubt the programmers working for protuningfreaks (for example) make an awful lot of money as a business. I also think you're doing them a disservice by saying an ECU is 'just a computer'. It's not like coding for an ECU is the same as writing an app for the iPhone.
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      10-31-2020, 02:23 PM   #42
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Originally Posted by Brandt51 View Post
This is probably an unpopular opinion, but if a programer/tuner really has skills, they're not doing aftermarket stuff. An ECU is just a computer.
Man, this is not at all an accurate statement. Millions are spent developing the hardware and software that goes into these. There are companies that exist purely to break these encryptions. If they are unsuccessful, their business will fail. It is these same companies that are telling people it is improbable.

Closed loop systems like this are incredibly hard to break, even before this new system. Take the current M2C as an example. This new one takes the encryptions to a new level.

Take another, simpler system for example, like a password for a website... if you used a 12+ character alpha numeric it would take a computer 10+ years to crack it. Now what if that password was 10,000 characters, with no hardwire connection?

As far as I understand this, the encryption for this is on the cpu itself. there is no bench unlocking this. you would have to physically replace the entire ECU with an unencrypted one... which is basically what this comes down to.
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      10-31-2020, 02:51 PM   #43
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Do we know for a fact this applies to the S55 post-July? I was under the impression that the encryption was only available in the new S58. As always I could be wrong.
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      10-31-2020, 03:00 PM   #44
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Do we know for a fact this applies to the S55 post-July? I was under the impression that the encryption was only available in the new S58. As always I could be wrong.
An M4 has apparently been spotted with this new system. We haven't yet had an M2C/CS owner confirm this yet though... I am attempting to get my M2C booked in with a garage for them to check the production date of the DME.
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