Successful Decryption of Toyota Tacoma ECU?

Being a geek I must ask, has anyone attempted to decrypt the TOYOTA ECU encryption so we may freely tune?

For some reason all roads seem to be leading to OVTune as a single source of failure as I’ve been doing my DD on my recent taco tune. I’m lovin my tune btw. Brought my Tacoma to life. Looking forward to future enhancements.

Being a coder, I’m a true believer of open source & options.

Any Tacoma CODING LOYALISTS interested in some fun?

 

How’s your knowledge of assembly and reverse engineering skills?

 

When I bought my truck a couple of years ago I had this same itch. I even bought yet another raspberry pi and the OBD connectors and looked into drivers so I could connect my pi to the truck and have it read out data but those parts are all in a box next to the stereo now heh.

I've also been a coder for decades (web developer/webmaster for a gov't agency is my current job.) I love assembly coding, when I was a kid I used to write software cracks and upload them to BBS's with my 2400 baud modem SO SLOW, ran a mailer node on FIDOnet, and even dabbled in viruses to see if I could evade the current crop of anti-virus software (I was successful but never released them in the wild, the code is still on my shelf!) One of my first jobs was working for a software company and reverse-engineering competitor file structures so we could convert their data files to ours when we enticed customers over to our better software.

But now that I'm old(er) I find I just play more chess and use my debuggers much less lately...guess it's a youth thing. But OP I say go for it, because it's great fun and you would learn a ton and potentially Matt would hire you lol........

 

OVTune spent years fully decoding the ECU. He’s not just gonna give all that info away for free

 

What does Mat have to do with op?

 

The code is hashed which would be the hardest part to overcome. Then you'd need to find out how the processor reads each command. I.e. what bits make up the Op code, rs, rt, etc. Then you'd have to actually know what each op code does. Is it an ADD, ADDI, etc. And you don't quite know what Op codes there are unless you really understand the processor that is within the ECU. Is there a math coprocessor or other parts within the bus that we are unaware of?

Quite frankly, it would be very challenging to figure out all that with the tools you or I would have at hand. Plus, it has already been done, why go through the trouble of doing it again?

I use my coding to create simple things like parsing logs to help identify problem areas, or to automatically convert logs to be readable by the vF log viewer (working on that now but having an issue where it thinks it's reaching EOF after the first line).

 

He mentioned OVTune being the only known person to fully decode the ECU

 

Hmmm...... sounds like an excellent way to Brick the ECU and kill the truck.

Nothing better than having $30K+ boat anchor in the driveway.

Not banging on the OP's skills. I'm surmising Toyota used proprietary software write the control program with protections.

 

I don’t know, as crappy as they programmed it initially it doesn’t seem like they did that much development. I mean when regular people who don’t work for Toyota can make a tune that makes more power, better delivery and fuel mileage which are all things Toyota should have maximized from the start. I’m not tuned, my truck does what I need it to by pressing harder on the skinny peddle, but I also trust people that say tunes are better than oem. I did have my truck updated and that made a difference so I’m sure there is more to be uncovered and realized. I guess I don’t understand why op wouldn’t use the existing tools to make a custom tune that he wants since that is now an option from the newest version…why reinvent the wheel so to speak.

 

Simply put…

I smell a monopoly and I want choice, period.

Stay “Tuned” fellow loyalists, options may soon be on the way.

FYI, brick trucks, no way! I can already virtualize the “env”

 

Choices are good, good luck. Username to post content checks out.

 

Took them 10 years to figure out the IS-F and thats a performance enthusiast car. Good luck.

 

Do me a favor and work on the 2020+ 4Runners. No one has cracked those. You can be first.

Also, the key to cracking the ECU’s appears to be in the ECU TSB .cuw files, not the ECU itself. Good luck!

 

My understanding is that the ECU cannot be read, but Mat could support it if Toyota came out with a cuw file. So unless Op can find a way to read the ECU, Mat will likely support it via an official Toyota update.

 

Yeah, I know. I’m one of the people that’s been poking 2020+ 4Runner support here and vF forum.

My point to OP was if you want to solve a new problem go there. The Tacoma nut has been cracked.

Mat told me you can actually open a .cuw file in VF and save it as a tune. Haven’t tried it yet. The .cuw files are the gateway into the ECU. Without them, the code is impossible to crack.

 

It's like Toyota wrote it in code or something. Weird.

 

Exactly… the key to unlock the door is in the program they use to unlock and open the door. Magic!

 

You specifically asked about the security, OVtune didn’t decrepit/break the ECU security which is why he is dependent on another company. Apparent Toyota displayed all or some of the key in some presentation or some such. But anyway you can use the same companies hardware and get the actual tune binary with some knoladge and modifications to open source software.
OVtune did however spend the time understanding the ECU binary and has gone to great lengths on that part, so unless you are very familiar with this it’s probably not worth you time considering the ~$700 price for a complete setup from OVtune.

 

Someone ship me their ECU and I'll give it a shot with my very limited knowledge of coding. I made a window say hello world once. I can probably do it.