Honda Civic Reverse Engineering

An open research project into 10th generation Honda Civic infotainment systems. This covers most Honda Civics from 2016-2021, inclusive. Lower-end trims such as the 2021 Civic LX are not supported as they use a different headunit.

Getting Started

Documentation is provided as Markdown files in the docs directory. Headunit files are provided in the headunit-files directory. My goal is to keep project organization simple and let complexity develop naturally. Contributions and PRs are welcome. Use GitHub discussions for correspondance; this repo is your repo.

Technical Overview

Infotainment SoC: NVIDIA Tegra 3, c. 2012
SoC Arch: Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 (ARM v7) Infotainment OS: Android 4.2.2 (Jellybean), released Oct. 29, 2012
Infotainment OS Framework: Mitsubishi-developed framework, codenamed "Andromeda"
CAN buses: B-CAN and F-CAN

Rooting

See: https://github.com/librick/ic1101/blob/main/docs/rooting.md
Assuming you have root access on your headunit, I highly recommend enabling adb and switching the USB port(s) to device mode. See docs/adb.md for more info. Do this before doing anything else, it may save you from bricking your device.

Explaining the Repo Name, IC 1101

The Mitsubishi headunit UI is codenamed "Andromeda". I wanted to avoid using a trademarked name for the name of this project/repo. According to this Wikipedia article, IC 1101 is the largest known galaxy in the universe. I.e., bigger than Andromeda. So I named this project "IC 1101".

Hacker News, Blog Post

I originally published this project on Hacker News. I also cover this project on my blog, juniperspring.xyz.

Legal Notice

⚠️ I'm not affiliated with Honda Motor Co., Ltd. I'm not affiliated with Mitsubishi. Honda and Honda Civic are registered trademarks. This is for personal use only. I can't condone software piracy. ⚠️

I take no responsibility for bricked/damaged cars, headunits, etc.
This is to document my own research only. I will not be held liable if you break your car.

All information in this repo should already be in the public domain or otherwise be publicly discoverable. I've intentionally avoided directly including .apk/.odex files or other "confidential"/proprietary information.

License

This project is MIT licensed. Where this project includes code from Android and/or the AOSP, refer to Android licenses. Where this project references code belonging to Mitsubishi Motors Corporation and/or Honda Motor Co., Ltd., it is understood that such code is proprietary and is the intellectual property of their respective owners. Any original research specific to this project is MIT licensed.

Contributors and Thanks

Thanks to @Tunas1337 for all his help and late-night hacking sessions. Much of this work is his in one form or another, particularly as it relates to more esoteric (but useful) knowledge of Android internals. Thanks :)

Miscellaneous Research and Resources

• Honda Civic CAN Bus Reverse Engineering
• GitHub, jersacct - 2016 Honda Pilot One-Click Root
• greenluigi1, Hyundai Ioniq Hacking, Part 5
• greenluigi1, Hyundai Ioniq Hacking, Part 6