Tesla Is Vulnerable: Hackers Remotely Turned Off Lights And Messed With Its Infotainment System

Security researchers at Synacktiv say that hackers could remotely access into a Tesla, turn off the lights, honk the horn, open the trunk and activate the windshield wipers.aa

Despite these flaws, the researchers noted that Tesla is doing an excellent job of making the car difficult to hack.

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Security researchers at Synacktiv say that hackers could remotely access into a Tesla, turn off the lights, honk the horn, open the trunk and activate the windshield wipers and mess with the infotainment system, as reported by TechCrunch. The report said that a security firm named Synacktiv came to this conclusion due to three vulnerabilities in Elon Musk-owned Tesla. 

The report said that the first vulnerability was exploitable via Bluetooth, the second vulnerability allowed the researchers to elevate their privileges and become root giving them free rein to execute code in the infotainment system, the last vulnerability gave them control of the security gateway, a component that sends some commands to the car.

As far as the researchers are aware, the worst-case scenario due to these vulnerabilities is to annoy a driver with certain potentially disruptive and obnoxious techniques. The good news is that they couldn't have operated the car's ignition or steering, at least not according to what Tesla told the researchers, the report added. 

One of the researchers told TechCrunch, "[Tesla] said we wouldn’t be able to turn the steering wheel, accelerate or brake. But from our understanding of the car architecture we are not sure that this is correct, but we don’t have proof of it. 

Despite these flaws, the researchers noted that Tesla is doing an excellent job of making the car difficult to hack by putting in place a sophisticated system of sandboxes, which isolates components and makes it more difficult to gain greater privileges by simply breaking into one of them.

“It’s not at the point of a modern browser running on an iPhone or an Android, but it’s not that far from it. Tesla cars are really well connected to the internet, so they need to take care of security because they are likely to be targeted more than other cars,” the researchers said.