Researchers at Technical University (TU) Berlin show how to unlock features on Tesla cars that are software-locked worth upto $15,000. Tesla claims that its software is reliable and secure. But there are a lot of cases where hackers have shown ways to tweak the system to gain access to the details of Tesla users and its features. Tesla is the largest EV maker on the planet. It prides itself on being a torchbearer in the electric mobility revolution. For that, it counts on its proprietary software. However, cases of people able to hack it are on the rise. Let us take a look at the details of this latest case.
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Researchers Unlock Tesla Features
German researchers were able to find a way to jailbreak the AMD-based infotainment systems used in Tesla cars. They developed a hack in their earlier research on AMD. They can inject faults into the system to steal information from the platform. To achieve this, they were using a voltage fault injection attack against the AMD Secure Processor (ASP). Using this, they can get access to owners’ personal information like phonebooks, calendar entries, call logs, Spotify and Gmail session cookies, WiFi passwords, places visited, etc and decrypt this information via the car’s system.
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Christian Werling told BleepingComputer, “Tesla informed us that our proof of concept enabling the rear seat heaters was based on an old firmware version. In newer versions, updates to this configuration item are only possible with a valid signature by Tesla (and checked/enforced by the Gateway). So while our attacks lay some important groundwork for tinkering with the overall system, another software or hardware-based exploit of the Gateway would be necessary to enable the rear seat heaters or any other soft-locked feature.” Using this hack, they get access to $15,000 features like Ventilated or Heated Seats, Performance Modes, Independent Repairs, and more.
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What We Think
These incidents are becoming rather common these days raising security concerns among Tesla owners. There was a similar incident recently where the hackers claimed that they are able to control the Full Self Driving (FSD) mode in some Tesla cars. We know that Tesla equips its cars with the hardware for that already. Hence, if the hackers are able to enter the software, they can try and activate a lot of features which are unlocked or are not publicly available just yet. Let us hope Tesla updates its software to take care of these issues at the earliest.
