Students bypass advanced protection of Tesla cars

Three information security researchers from the Technical University of Berlin forced Tesla's driver assistant to turn on this "Elon mode" and thus gained access to the company's secrets. All Tesla models are believed to be vulnerable to this attack.

With tools that cost approximately 600 euros, TU Berlin students Christian Werling, Niclas Kühnapfel and Hans-Niklas Jacob caused a short two-second voltage drop of 560 millivolts and thus "rooted" the ARM64 circuit of Tesla's autopilot.

The power outage allowed the researchers to obtain arbitrary code and user data from the system, including cryptographic keys and important parts of the system, which enabled them to reconstruct the system's operation. The researchers even gained access to a video with GPS coordinates that the previous owner of the vehicle had deleted.

German researchers managed to find out which data Tesla collects to train its artificial intelligence and which it ignores.

"Elon mode" is a secret function of fully self-driving hands-free driving that hackers managed to discover earlier. This executive mode enables Tesla vehicles to drive themselves without any driver intervention or control. The method was discovered in June 2023 by @greentheonly, who tested it and published some images on social networks.

This type of bypass could also enable free premium features. Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) capability is available as an additional purchase for 12,000 US dollars. However, it requires active driver control and does not enable actual autonomous driving of the car. The FSD system has been criticized several times for its incorrect decisions.

With their work, the researchers wanted to explain Tesla's security architecture and loopholes in the Autopilot system. It is assumed that all Tesla vehicles are vulnerable to this type of attack, since they all probably use the same circuit, even if the owner has not purchased an assistance system. while driving. The researchers themselves were surprised at how easily they got hold of Tesla's secrets.