[Music]
all right we are here at the ct app
which is a competition for
maritime hacking we've got a set of
monsters behind us that are
representative of
technology that you find on a small
commercial ship or a large pledger young
so it's really interesting we've got uh
the contestants here to be able to pack
on the consoles over dan bus or 2000
we've got it running today through
tomorrow we've got a virtual competition
that's starting tomorrow for uh offline
analysis on data caches that are gonna
be talking tomorrow
here is the million dollar question they
score points by packing the the shift
the controls what is the ultimate goal
they're
pushing for like what's the type of
control they're gonna get during the
contest yeah so we've got three
subsystems that are on here steering
propulsion and navigation we've got
different flags if you guys are familiar
with the uh the ever given event that
happened back in uh in march one of the
flags is named after jamming the rugged
hearts hardcore and you know
that's a that's a pretty critical
failure at that point you're overriding
the physical controls with the serial
connection
so that's that's seeking a shift that's
a cyber season
so the ultimate just getting this right
yeah the ultimate goal of the contest is
to sink the ship exactly we're
representing like hey this is what could
happen worst case when using your
exploit
that's awesome it's really tempting to
touch every button but i don't want to
mess with anyone's ctf
but this is
really freaking cool
these guys right now aquaman is hacking
away at a virtual boat trying to sink it
and they're in second but man
oh no they're in first they're tied for
first
neck and neck right now with only a few
seconds between them they took some
they're gonna take a quick break from
exploitation just to talk through some
of the things they've been doing so
first and foremost what attracted you
guys to this ctf did you know you were
going to do it before khan
no not at all i mean
i've done like all these kinds of online
ctfs before you know so those weren't uh
anything really special but i saw this
and this is something i'd never seen
before and it seemed like a once in a
you know
defcon opportunity
uh there's something particularly
satisfying
about hacking a physical system i think
uh you can see all the things move and
it's just it's just very cool it's so
cool because i'm seeing teams go up here
and every time like they launch an
exploit you see the wheel turn you see
like the
the gas go off the tilt of the boat go
all over the place it is so so cool so
with you guys scoring so high what
things have you been able to accomplish
so far
uh so we've basically been able to
hijack the boat it's pretty cool like we
can uh change the you know the throttle
we can steer the boat entirely and so
now we're working on just hacking the
navigation so you could send it to an
arbitrary destination turn on autopilot
stuff like that
how do you go about doing that like
obviously it's not like a normal system
where there's like a web admin interface
is it is it like protocol fuzzing you're
doing like how do you go about sending
like sending the malicious payload
so uh we record we record data from the
bus
and we look for discrepancies in the
data whenever we change a feature
on the ship and once we've identified
whichever whatever triggers such a
feature whatever changes for example the
direction of the ship we can spoof that
data and inject it back into the bus
so
so what you're doing is you dump the
information off you listen to it you
kind of like reverse engineer it a
little bit do you have a like are you
working from a technical documentation
for the boat
you legitimately have to go like start
from scratch no documentation reverse it
and then start trying it so okay you
pull the information off you put it on
your system you reverse engineer it you
now go okay like i think i know how to
control this i know how to control this
you make your payload what happens next
well then you just test it out you know
basically after you've captured all of
this data and you've you know put the
throttle all the way put it back put it
all the way and you've timed it and you
look at your packet capture and you say
oh these bytes change so these bytes are
responsible then you make your payload
and you attack you just see if it works
i mean
what what has been the most satisfying
feeling when you've
launched the exploit which one have you
done so far where you're like like you
physically see it happen you're like oh
that's terrifying like because we know
this is supposed to match a real boat
this isn't like a mythical like
i like ctf challenge where the
challenges don't really match real life
like what has been the most satisfying
one you found
for me the most satisfying has been
when we finally got control over the
throttle working
steering alone you know it's pretty cool
but once you have steering and throttle
you can really take the boat anywhere
you want and it has been both uh scary
and very satisfying to have that control
that's awesome man like you got i don't
want to take any more time from you guys
like man you guys are neck and neck best
of luck and and that's how you hack a
boat at def con thanks for watching and
hack on