GM launched the Global B electronic vehicle communications platform for the 2020 model year, with the 2020 Cadillac CT5 and 2020 C8 Corvette Stingray offered as the first production models to equip it. Also known as the GM Vehicle Intelligence Platform, or VIP, the Global B system serves as the vehicles’ “central nervous system,” allowing internal vehicle systems to communicate with one another. The Global B system provides a variety of benefits over previous electronic platforms, including enhanced cybersecurity that makes it difficult for tuners to crack. Nevertheless, tuners have managed to modify the Global B system – but The General isn’t taking it sitting down.
GM Authority has exclusively learned that General Motors is actively “hardening” various Global B components, making them more difficult for tuners to crack and modify. In fact, the automaker has been hardening the automatic transmission controllers and engine controllers in its full-size SUVs, full-size trucks, Cadillac V-Series, and a selection of C8 Corvette models since the 2023 model year.
In order to make these components more difficult to crack, sources familiar with the matter tell GM Authority that the automaker’s engineers analyze the way in which tuners may have “broken into” a controller, then build a patch to prevent it from happening in the future. As a result, both General Motors and the broader tuning community go back and forth in playing a game of “whack-a-mole,” either cracking or patching a particular vehicle module.
When it initially launched for the 2020 model year, the GM Global B platform promised a wealth of benefits over previous electronic architectures, including a fivefold increase in data processing, over-the-air (OTA) software updates, more rapid communication between various vehicle components, as well as the ability to provide customers with the option to unlock certain features after vehicle purchase.
The list of benefits also includes enhanced cybersecurity, both at the hardware and software levels. However, this enhanced security also made it more difficult for the aftermarket to tinker with the products in question, such as in modifying engine software when adding turbochargers or a supercharger.
Courtesy Trifecta Performance
Nevertheless, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and now, some tuners offer Global B tuning services, including HP Tuners and Trifecta Performance.
We’ll have more on this story in the near future, so stay tuned.
Comments
Mary should allow Global B access to all.
The only thing a whack-a-mole race with tuners is going to get us, is buggy rushed updates.
What’s the rule in computer security; if a hacker has physical access and time, they can do anything? Well a car sitting in a tuner’s shop gives them both.
GM should just cede this. A buggy update which bricks one’s computer is a royal PITA but usually just that. A buggy update which leaves one’s vehicle inop inside a parking ramp someplace? Now we have problems.
Why not let owners do what they want with their own property that they already purchased from you? This is asinine.
Are you sure it’s actually purchased and owned?
As Money for Nothing posed below, multiple makers have tried to pull the legalese where the software (and sometimes the entire device/machine/vehicle) is merely LICENSED to us. Yes it’s complete bull#, and it’s also out there.
The same owners that are very quick to sue if there are software vulnerability issues. eh?
Software control is more extorted customer money, just ask John Deere.
Even if I don’t want to tune my vehicle for additional aftermarket components, I should at the very least have the right to override GM’s terrible transmission shift maps, which are ALWAYS tuned for fuel efficiency and the earliest torque converter lock-up possible. This just puts more wear and tear on the driveline components over time, in addition to the driving dynamics not being as responsive.
Unfortunately, more EPA regulation gone haywire. We could have every vehicle on the market today hitting 300,000-plus miles with just oil changes, but the EPA would rather mandate that your overstressed turbo and always shifty transmission blow up prematurely, grenading the vehicle for most consumers.
What’s better for the environment overall? Emissions on longer lasting vehicles or turning automobiles into a disposable consumer product like a cell phone? Classifying these vehicles today as “durable” goods is a farce.
GM should fix the theft problem on Camaro6 and C7s while they are at it.
Why would GM allow only their competitors the advantage of having private race teams with powertrain modifications? It’s the opposite of a “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday” philosophy.
This is not just GM its all manufactures. Its because they are trying to keep the vehicles in EPA spec. Should be able to modify, i think so but when you have a government agency with too much power this is what happens. Its ugly but until we get common sense back in government agency it just might get worse.
Hasn’t Global B been a nightmare for Colorado & Canyon owners?
Seems every time they do an OTA update, something bricks in the vehicles.
“…the ability to provide customers with the option to unlock certain features after vehicle purchase”
…O,r the ability by GM to be able to charge a subscription fee to access power windows and disable those features if you don’t feel like paying for them anymore [among all of the other powered or technological features].