Reverse-Engineering CAN Bus for Engine Swaps, Dashes, Telemetry & Security

Recorded live at SecTor 2025 — this session was delivered to a security audience, but it's highly relevant to anyone building or modifying vehicles. Whether you're doing an engine swap, EV conversion, capturing race telemetry, or integrating aftermarket gauges and dashes, this is a practical introduction to working with CAN bus in real-world builds.

00:00 - Introduction, Who I Am, What We'll Learn
04:25 - How CAN Bus Works
06:48 - Where and How is CAN Used
08:09 - Understanding CAN Bus
10:03 - Understanding Binary (This is Important)
12:40 - Understanding a CAN Message
14:15 - Hardware Needed
19:00 - Watching the Network (Viewing the Bus)
19:50 - SavvyCAN Introduction Demo, Basic Reversing
27:33 - Discussion of Reversing Activity
29:15 - SavvyCan Demo of Signal Viewer Functions
32:16 - SavvyCan Demo of Advanced Functions
34:09 - DBC Files
39:18 - Bringing Additional Data on the CAN Bus
40:27 - Strategies for Using CAN for Telemetry, Translation and Dashes
43:30 - Conclusion

A few handy links from tools mentioned in the video:
🔧 SavvyCAN (CAN sniffer & analyzer):
https://github.com/collin80/SavvyCAN

📁 OpenDBC (community-built DBC files):
https://github.com/commaai/opendbc

📐 Online DBC Editor (CSS Electronics):
https://www.csselectronics.com/pages/...