ECU Reverse Engineering

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ECU Reverse Engineering

Postby HexTrain » Tue Jul 30, 2019 10:22 am

Hey everyone,

I know that this forum is about tunning, however, I hoped that maybe experts like you could help me :)

I'm more interested in reverse engineering the ECU - to statically analysis code in IDA Pro or another disassembler.

I saw here and in other tuning sites ECU files to download. Are the files that reference as 'original' are just the firmware image downloaded from the ECU?

If yes, Most of the files that I looked at I couldn't recognize the CPU architecture (I guess that the ECU is run on a microcontroller?). Is this information available somewhere? (for example, if it's ARM, PPC, Renesas...)
Or do you have any tips for recognizing the CPU architecture for further research?

Another thing is that most of the files have very specific sizes - most of them are powers of 2 (1024KB, 2048KB..). Why is that? It's very different from any other firmware that I saw..

Thank you very much!

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Re: ECU Reverse Engineering

Postby alex_sk » Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:57 pm

ORI is the image of the flash chip from ECU. Usualy it contines program, librarys and data for the ecu's MCU. Most of ecu's MCU is Von Neumann architecture and flash chip is the part of common memory address area. You must use settings for MCU from the ecu in IDA . For example, Bosch EDC15 ecus based on Infineon C167 MCU family. Infineon site contins enought info about this MCU.

BR. Alex

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Re: ECU Reverse Engineering

Postby HexTrain » Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:43 am

Any ideas what is the best approach of a given ECU to find on what MCU is it based on?

Do you know if some of the ECUs are based on ARM/PPC/MIPS architecture? And if yes, any suggestions to how to find them out of all the ECUs?

Basically, I'm looking for MCUs to reverse engineer, but I look to the more common CPU architectures like ARM/PPC/MIPS.

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Re: ECU Reverse Engineering

Postby alex_sk » Wed Jul 31, 2019 9:24 pm

Open ecu and look :)
Or search in Internet.
AFAIK in ecu used MCU from industrial application line, not common.

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Re: ECU Reverse Engineering

Postby 2xded » Fri Aug 02, 2019 11:38 am

See attached file.
You do not have permissions to view the files yet. You have to be registered and you have to make at least 3 quality / unique posts.

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Re: ECU Reverse Engineering

Postby HexTrain » Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:29 am

2xded wrote:See attached file.

Thanks, it's really helpful!

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