Kamel Ghali: Hack the Fleet — Inside DEF CON's Car Hacking Village

On this episode of Kill Chain, we go straight to the source with someone who spends his career trying to break into cars, trucks, and the chargers that power them. Kamel Ghali is an automotive cybersecurity researcher, penetration tester, and educator, and VP of International Operations for DEF CON's Car Hacking Village — the group that's been teaching the world to hack vehicles safely since 2017.

Kamel walks us through a real exploit chain that hands over root access to an aftermarket infotainment system with nothing but a USB stick and a few taps on a touchscreen, the 2015 Jeep hack that changed the industry's culture overnight, and a wireless attack called Brokenwire that can knock a charging session offline from a passing car in about five seconds. If your fleet has a single electric vehicle charging overnight, this is the episode that explains exactly what's at stake.

In this episode:

• What actually happens inside DEF CON's official car hacking masterclass
• A live walkthrough of rooting an aftermarket infotainment system with a USB stick
• Why Tesla's from-scratch build gives it a security edge the legacy OEMs can't match
• The origin story of Car Hacking Village, and how it went global
• The SDR attack that let a researcher mess with a semi-truck's trailer brakes for a couple hundred dollars in hardware
• Why EV chargers are full computers, and most are running insecure protocols
• The wireless "Brokenwire" attack that can disrupt EV charging without touching the vehicle
• A real car theft that used CAN injection through a headlight, no key required
• What ISO 21434 and UN R155 actually require of automakers now

Chapters: 0:00 Cold Open 2:24 Inside the Car Hacking Masterclass 8:19 Root, No Password 12:25 Pwn2Own & Why Tesla Leads 16:42 The Car Hacking Village Origin Story 23:47 Village Sponsors 26:25 Why Villages Matter 31:16 Ground Zero 36:20 The Weak Link 37:54 What to Expect at Car Hacking Village 41:11 What Kamel's Working On Now 43:39 Plugged In, Wide Open 47:36 The Tesla Wall Connector Hack 49:18 Broken Wire 51:39 Why This Matters 59:09 Ransomware & Cybercrime Motives 1:01:56 Real-World Car Theft: The RAV4 Case 1:04:03 Hollywood vs. Reality 1:05:35 Final Thoughts: The Next Ten Years 1:09:46 Outro / Car Hacking Village Plug

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