OK, so I know it was possible to hack older navi systems. Does anyone know how to hack the 09 TSX system yet...specifically, looking to get rid of the startup nag.

Old hack instructions:
https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-audio-bluetooth-electronics-navigation-94/navigation-hack-guide-welcome-screen-mod-trip-computer-ok-button-nag-removal-604912/

 

Really interested in this also!! I am dying to customize my navi-screen!

 

FYI, according to the thread (link) above, looks like the current software 4.xx is more complicated than the older software 3.xx. I believe someone was looking at the hacking one of the DLL files, but this file seems be hack-protected...which is apparently why the current software isn't hackable (yet).

Hating the nag screen in LA...

 

I can't wait to disable "Welcome screen" where you have to hit "OK" every time you start the car//

 

yes, that is such as hassle!

 

Still no update on this? Where are those hackers? Nag screen is REALLY pissing me off. We should only have to agree once and call it a day. Sheesh....

 

Hey!.. what happen to this thread??? nobody interested to hack their navi... where are those hackers, anywayz.

 

I have not heard of any hacks yet. But you can access the the diagnostic screen by pressing and holding the "Back, Map/Guide and Menu" buttons for 5 seconds. Pressing and holding the "Menu" button while in GPS information screen will get you more GPS sat info, and gives you your calculated speed using the GPS sats. I use it to check my speedo.

 

tired the "Back, Map Guide, and Menu" button thing and it did bring up the diagnostic screen... no sign of a way to remove the warning screen though. The holding the menu button didnt work for me though.

 

Technically this is not a hack, but what Acura techs will use to troubleshoot problem with your navigation/radio/AC unit/etc.. You have to be in "GPS information," which is two menu presses pass the main menu. It's the option where you see how many satellites are detected, and how many satellites are over your head. use your dial to select, and press enter to click through. Besides that, play around until you get to the screen

 

I have very little hacking knowledge of the Navi, but I am going to rip my DVD soon and see what I can find out. If they are using compiled .dlls then it may be hard to reverse engineer anything out of them...

 

My guess on how the software is set up is that it's compiled and then two way encrypted by Honda. Honda has the private encryption key and and the navi unit has the public key. The dlls can be unencrypted by the public key in the navi but only if they were encrypted with the private key that only Honda has. What this does is ensure that only software that came from Honda will run on the hardware. This process is called digital signing. It's very commonly used in the larger software world and now that built in CPUs of many embedded devices, such as the navi, are becoming much more powerful, it is showing up in those situations as well. To be able to run custom software on the device, one would either need the private key or need to hack the bios (itself also likely to be encrypted) and install their own public key to which one has the matching private key. Either that or brute force crack the private key which could take millions of CPU hours.

If this is indeed the scheme used, the likelihood of the navi being hacked is very low.

 

When the nissan GTR came out it was deemed they made the ECU impossible to hack, less then a week after it was released several companies hacked into the ECU. As Honda/Acura switches all their cars to this style navigation I think someone will hack it eventually, just a matter of time.

Look at "DVD Jon" the Norwegian, teenager at the time of arrest, that hacked the DVD encryption.

 

The DVD hack was easier because there are lot of public keys that match the single private key. This makes brute force cracking mathematically easier. There were also a bunch of people donating CPU time (think seti@home) to cracking the key. The encryption used by the navi, if it's there at all, is likely much harder to crack. You can't really compare this situation to any other case of hardware cracking because there's a huge variety of ways to do it. Until some one digs out more information, it's all just wild (but informed) speculation.

 

Very true, your last sentence in particular. As history has shown us the more "unbreakable" something is, the more people want to break it, it's just human nature.

 

If you can get the data back out by some means then the encryption has to be breakable. If you can't get the data back out, all you can use the encrypted data for is verification (called one way encryption which is how this website (hopefully) stores your password. Your password is encrypted on your machine before it's submitted and then that's compared to the stored encrypted value. If they match, the site knows that you know the password even though the site has no idea what it is). It's logically impossible to make an unbreakable two way encryption. All they can do is make it a sufficiently large pain in the ass that it's not worth trying.

 

BTW, I noticed that the software on my Navi was newer than the disk, from playing around in the Diagnostic screen. Is there a way to dump the current version on a flash drive or something? I assume not, but maybe that will be a place to start...

 

Good luck with this guys. We still don't know how to bypass the "OK" button on the 06-08's!