[drgmt]

" Paul Blamire:
EcuTek Announcement:
Locked Bosch Bootloaders

As you may have seen some news, I would like to clarify the issues present on newly manufactured Bosch MEVD and MG1 ECUs.

We've been aware of a situation brewing in Bosch ECUs initially identified on BMW platforms but potentially affects all Bosch Tricore platforms that are currently being manufactured. We were unsure of the extent of these changes and how it would impact our business and yours, but we are starting to see affected ECUs out in the wild now.
Bosch have updated the security on their most recently manufactured ECUs that means that "bench unlocking" is no longer possible. This issue has been seen on MEVD17 ecus in BMW M4s manufactured in July 2020, and in MG1S024 ECUs in B48/B58 cars manufactured late June, July and August 2020. The exact data of the switchover is unknown but the earliest date we have currently is 25th June.

The result means for newly manufactured cars:
No OBD unlock
No Bench unlock
No bootpin unlock (that's right even opening the ECU to get direct access to the processor does not help)
Not just BMW will be affected, expect to see this coming to the likes of Mercedes etc.
There are no tuning products in existence that can support these new ECUs, it's an industry wide problem, not just an Ecutek problem.
The latest cars will NOT tuneable using an ECU reflash from any company, with any tool.
Older cars are unaffected and will continue to be tuneable

The changes are to the lowest level Bosch code, pre-programmed by Bosch at point of manufacturer (it is not an update to the BMW or manufacturer specific bootloader). So this is not something that can be easily recognised by the ID of the BMW software version, Calibration ID or bootloader version, our best guess is that it affects cars from June 2020 onwards. Our current information is that this new Bosch bootloader is not field upgradeable, so that means that existing ECUs with the older Bosch bootloader cannot be updated to the locked version with something like a dealer reflash (this is good!)

Our long term approach is we're looking for ways to allow programming of these ECUs, but it's a significant challenge which we don't quite know the scale of yet. We are working very hard to find a solution to this and nothing is being ruled out as a potential fix.

In the short term we intend to add the manufacturing date fields to our query tools to try and allow tuners to know with greater certainty what they are dealing with. Our plans for tuning products are already changing as a result of this development, and you may see our focus change subtly to support more existing vehicles on other platforms. We will continue to increase the breadth and depth of our tools and features to really push what is possible in the OEM ECU marketplace.

I realise this is not what you want to hear, but this is the reality at the moment. I would urge tuners across all marques, using all software tools to plan ahead when it comes to their customers and treat them fairly and with respect. None of us expected this to happen and we are all affected in one way or another. Be wary of anyone that claims to have a solution to this problem, until it's independently verified you should assume it's still an issue. When a company does have a solution, this is good news for everyone, as we will know it's not impossible to solve."