Tesla electric car can be hacked at Defcon conference



    One of the Tesla electric car models will be brought to the Defcon hacker conference this summer, and everyone can try to hack it. Naturally, not physically crack by knocking doors or windows, but through an integrated computer system.

    "The benefit for the Tesla will be twofold - say analysts. “They learn about bugs in the car and recognize those hackers who are worth hiring.” We add that there is a third potential benefit: if vulnerabilities are not found, then Tesla can use this fact for advertising.

    Last year, Tesla Motors representatives came to Defcon to search for potential job candidates. According to rumors , the company was going to recruit up to 30 hackers so that they would check the reliability of the car computer.

    Tesla held the exact same hacking contest at the SyScan hacker conference in Beijing (July 16-17, 2014). Directly in the exhibition hall put a copy of Model S and several computers.

    Independent experts have repeatedly expressed that such contests do more harm than good . It is more like a show. How many people will take part in the competition? Only a few who come to the conference. If they do not find vulnerabilities, the manufacturing company will make a false assumption that its product is safe to use. Even if they find something, the manufacturer will report a bug fix and, again, make a false assumption that the product no longer has vulnerabilities.

    In fact, connecting to the Tesla Model S can be even easier than connecting to other machines, because here the internal electronics are integrated into the local Ethernet network , and the car computer runs under Ubuntu.

    The 100 Mbps full duplex network in the Tesla Model S connects three devices with IP addresses in the 192.168.90.0 segment. This is the main console, screen / navigation bar and another unknown device.

    Some of the ports and services used are:

    • 22 (SSH)
    • 23 (telnet)
    • 53 (DNS)
    • 80 (HTTP)
    • 111 (rpcbind)
    • 2049 (NFS)
    • 6000 (X11)

    A modified version of Ubuntu with an ext3 file system runs on a car computer.


    They managed to connect to the Tesla Model S car computer via Ethernet.

    That is, these are not some exotic proprietary protocols, but standard well-studied software. Let's see what Defcon visitors can do.

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