Tesla Hacking Cases for the Entire Time of Existence
Automation is a key factor in the development and prosperity of developed countries. Therefore, the presence of a competitive and well-established automotive market is an important condition for successful economic development. The analysis of the current situation in the world car market clearly shows that the automotive industry is in a state of digitalization. Along with the introduction of new advanced technologies, there is an increase in the volume of electric cars.
Tesla is a well-known company that started with the production of electric sports cars and has now become a large energy corporation. Models made by Tesla are not inferior to their gasoline counterparts. But they are much easier to manage, less noisy, and environmentally friendly. That is why they attract modern motorists.
Tesla has gone through a thorny path to recognition. It had to face many hacking attacks, which was due to the free availability of electronic information resources, not enough reliable mode of operation of communication and technological systems, etc. Today, Tesla does not have unsecured ports but connects to VPN list servers to increase security. Without additional protection provided by VPN, there is a risk of hacking.
Below we consider the cases of hacking, which are known in the history of Tesla.
Tesla Hacking and Cloud Cryptocurrency Mining
Hackers often benefit from mining cryptocurrencies. For this purpose, they infect applications for mobile devices, embed miner scripts into popular sites, or inject their malicious code into the software of large companies. This allows taking advantage of the computing power.
In 2018, the Tesla company became a victim of crypto miners. There are almost no details about what the hackers, who hacked the Tesla cloud service, were doing besides mining. According to Tesla, the hack became possible because they simply forgot to put a password on the Kubernetes console. Yet such a hack could lead to more serious consequences. Especially if we take into account that the Tesla cloud stores data on the telemetry of absolutely all Tesla cars. The company assured that the information from several test machines turned out to be compromised. User data was not damaged.
Hacking of Tesla Model 3 in Several Minutes
In 2019, a duo of hackers known as Fluoroacetate managed to break into a Tesla Model 3 in just a few minutes. Then the participants of the prestigious Pwn20wn hacker competition were offered to hack the electric car. The guys were able to hack the Model 3 Internet browser using a vulnerability in JIT compilation. The hacking was confirmed by the output of an arbitrary phrase on the display of the car’s multimedia system. The prize was the electric car itself.
Tesla Hacked with a Drone
German cybersecurity experts Ralf-Philipp Weinmann and Benedikt Schmotzle were able to remotely access the multimedia system of a Tesla Model X electric vehicle using a drone. The vulnerability of the system turned out to be the Connman connection manager, which can be accessed via Wi-Fi. Previously, researchers found that Tesla machines constantly check for available wireless networks and connect to a network called Tesla Service. Another hacker previously extracted the regular password from this network from Tesla’s firmware.
As a result, the researchers obtained an attack method in which the car independently connects to a malicious Wi-Fi. And then the attacker, using two Connman vulnerabilities, gets the ability to randomly execute code on the computer of the electric car. Hacking includes access to Tesla apps but not to the control of the movement of the electric car.
Weinman and Schmotzle found a vulnerability in Tesla’s software in the fall of 2020 and immediately contacted the company. Tesla solved the problem by replacing the Connman connection manager with dnsmasq.
Hacking Security Cameras at Tesla Factories
In early 2021, hackers gained access to data from about 150,000 surveillance cameras installed in hospitals, police stations, and some companies, including Tesla. According to Bloomberg, the attack was carried out by an international hacker team to show how easy it is to break the video surveillance system.
As a result, hackers obtained footage from 222 cameras at Tesla’s plants and warehouses in Shanghai. To prevent any unauthorized access, all internal administrator accounts have been disabled.
Hacking Famous People’s Twitter Accounts
Popular accounts on the Twitter social network, owned by leading US businessmen and politicians, were hacked in July 2020. Attackers sent messages on their behalf with offers to double payments in bitcoins. Twitter had to temporarily disable its functions for a whole group of users. Mostly for verified accounts. During the attack, 130 accounts were hacked.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s account was one of the first to be hacked. The scammers started offering free cryptocurrencies on his behalf. They offered users to send money to a specific crypto wallet and promised to double all incoming payments. Messages were promptly deleted, but Twitter users managed to send money to scammers’ wallets. Blockchain information, that is, a distributed database through which payments were made, was in the public domain. The incident was one of the greatest in the history of the Twitter social network.
So, Tesla electric cars are a fairly developing and popular area in the automotive industry. Innovative vehicles provide drivers with the information they need in real-time. However, Tesla cars, like cars from other companies (Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, etc.), are subject to cyberattacks. In some cases, the data of car owners become available. And sometimes scammers just break into cars using keyless breaking methods. There have also been incidents where smartphone apps were hacked. Every year cyberattacks become more serious and dangerous. Therefore, automakers pay great attention to encryption and reliable data protection. Thanks to VPN, today it has become much easier to ensure high security.
