A team of security researchers discovered a horrific vulnerability in the Tesla car program.
This allowed them to take advantage of the car's software and control it from a distance.
Researchers Ralph Philip Weinman and Benedict Schmutzel found that they could penetrate the touch-based infotainment system to manipulate various driving settings, move the chair, and even more seriously open the doors and trunk of the car and operate it remotely, by flying a drone that emits a "WiFi" signal. It connects to a component of the car, according to Interesting Engineering.
Fortunately, the two of the so-called "white hats" had good intentions, the team noticed the interesting flaw, and had already reached out to Tesla, giving the carmaker time to fix the vulnerabilities before it was announced, and dubbed the "T-Bone" vulnerability. (TBONE), and shared it online last week.
"Even though Tesla corrected the flaw, the hack still poses a threat to other carmakers that use the same weak component. A less experienced hacker can use the T-Bone trick just as easily to gain control of another car," Weinman (a hacker) said in the team's announcement. Even if it is not a Tesla, converting that car into a "worm" gives intruders control of other nearby vehicles as well. "
The hacking team was hoping to share what they discovered in last year's PWN2OWN hacker contest.
When this competition was not conducted due to the Corona pandemic, the team decided to contact Salé directly to inform her of these security holes, and then publish their findings online.
Before the information was released, Tesla had time to address the security flaws, which are no longer a problem for the company's electric vehicles.
The interesting thing about this discovery is that everything can be done from a distance, which is why Weinmann and Schötzel used a drone to reach Tesla remotely, and the duo didn't even have to see the vehicles to penetrate them, let alone approach them.
Explaining their motivation, the researchers said, "Our mission is to bring the power of cloud computing and simulation to test embedded automotive systems, at scale."
This kind of infiltration or piracy is permissible, and these hackers usually carry out these actions in order to seek prizes by companies who can penetrate their systems to find out the gaps in them, hence their name "white hats".
It is not surprising that people find vulnerabilities in systems, especially when they are new or if they perform software updates.
Firms that release new software greatly welcome this information, and a number of bug bounty programs are widely circulated, encouraging hackers and tech enthusiasts to try to hack or discover vulnerabilities in systems to get paid for submitting the information they discover.
And in 2019, Tesla introduced one of its Model 3 cars to anyone who could compromise their vehicle's systems.