Circuit board design and electric vehicle decoding

Research has indicated that it is possible for an attacker to gam remote code execution on the electronic control units (ECU) in automotive vehicles via various interfaces. Different vehicles have different Controller Area Network (CAN) signals to control vehicle functionalities such as steering, braking, acceleration and display. Hence, CAN message decoding must be carried out before car hacking happened. The main objective of the project is to design a circuit board and perform C programming to establish communication between CAN bus in an electric vehicle and a personal computer (PC), as well as decode the CAN message received from the electric car. The hardware will be a circuit board that is capable of capturing the CAN signals released from the electric vehicle by wire, and also sending a specific CAN message from the circuit board back to the car as well. The circuit board consists of a Universal Serial Board (USB) port, which can make connection between the circuit board and the personal computer. The software is the firm-ware programmed into microcontroller PIC18F2455 by PICkit 2. Also, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is to be developed to allow testing of various functions of circuit board. The GUI can display and simulate CAN signals sent to the electric vehicle that can control its functionalities through several simple clicks of button. In the test, the CAN message received from the car is displayed by the CAN adapter. The application of this dissertation focuses on decoding the CAN message extracted from an electric vehicle. Literature review and cases related to car decoding are evaluated to design a proper decoding case for Mitsubishi 1-MiEV. CAN messages that related to the basic functions of the electric vehicle as well as the Battery Control Unit decoded.Master of Science (Electronics