A group of researchers have discovered a way to hack the electronics behind Tesla’s infotainment system, allowing them to obtain free enhancements such as heated rear seats.
Christian Werling, one of the three students from Technische Universität Berlin, along with an independent researcher, conducted a physical attack on a Tesla car using a technique called voltage glitching. They manipulated the supply voltage of the AMD processor in the infotainment system, causing the CPU to skip an instruction and accept their manipulated code. By doing this, they could jailbreak the car and access its features without paying for certain upgrades.
The researchers, who will present their findings at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, said that their attack requires physical access to the car, but that’s exactly the scenario where their jailbreak would be useful.
The researchers used a technique called voltage glitching to trick the car’s CPU into executing their manipulated code. They were also able to extract the encryption key used to authenticate the car to Tesla’s network, and personal information from the car such as contacts, recent calendar appointments, call logs, locations the car visited, Wi-Fi passwords and session tokens from email accounts.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechCrunch.