“So I now have full remote control of over 20 Tesla models in 10 different countries and there seems to be no way I can contact the owners to warn them.” In the thread of tweets that appeared on his profile, German pirate David Colombo It has announced that it has remotely controlled more than 20 cars of the Elon Musk-founded brand around the world, putting a safety issue in the spotlight that could become more and more central in the future. With the technological advancement of cars and Possibility to perform software updates over the air, the problem of system vulnerability already appears.
It’s not clear how the nineteen-year-old computer scientist was able to hack the affected Tesla software, but Colombo would have had no ill intentions, limiting himself to emphasizing the importance. The hacker had already tried to contact Tesla and after the first difficulties he would have received a response from the brand, which is already active in trying to trace the causes of this security breach. As explained on Twitter by a young computer whizzHowever, the problem will not lie in the infrastructure of the Palo Alto brand nor even in the software provided by Tesla, but in some third-party software that model owners of American car manufacturers are increasingly installing on their cars. These are systems that allow you to monitor, for example, the exact consumption of the battery or the remote control of some functions that usually cannot be used remotely thanks to the official Tesla app.
So, I now have full remote control of over 20 Tesla cars in 10 countries and there seems to be no way to find and inform the owners about it…
– David Colombo (@david_colombo_) January 10 2022
in this way Vehicle safety and security will be at risk, allowing you to remotely control your Tesla car. Colombo has specified that the models in question cannot be driven remotely, but in any case will be able to access functions such as managing the infotainment system, starting the engine, opening doors, controlling windows or music entertainment. Even a hacker will be able to disable the guard mode. Following what was reported by a German IT expert, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, the US Department of Security’s Vulnerability Portal will publish a full report on the incident.
