The amount of technology packed into modern cars is kind of amazing. Just a few years ago, the most advanced thing in most vehicles was the cell phone in the user’s pocket. Now, many cars have computer-controlled engines, brakes, entertainment systems, and communications. Cool.
The downside of this revolution is that some of these systems can be compromised remotely. Researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller demonstrated this several times over the last couple of years, and now a team of researchers from Keen Security Lab has picked up the baton. The Keen Lab team researched the software systems on Tesla vehicles and found methods to remotely unlock the doors, open the sunroof, and even apply the brakes from 12 miles away.
The Keen researchers have reported the vulnerabilities to Tesla Motors and the company is in the process of fixing them and will issue a software update soon.
“As far as we know, this is the first case of remote attack which compromises CAN Bus to achieve remote controls on Tesla cars. We have verified the attack vector on multiple varieties of Tesla Model S. It is reasonable to assume that other Tesla models are affected,” the researchers said.
Video from Keen Security Lab.
Image from Flickr stream of Ninac26.
