Tesla was successfully hacked at the Pwn2Own conference and in the process, the hackers won $100,000 and the Model 3 they were able to present.
Over the past few years, Tesla has invested a lot in cyber security and works closely with white hat hackers. The automaker entered the Pwn2Own hacking contest by offering big prizes and its electric cars to hack its competitors.
Hacking cars, and Tesla vehicles in particular, have been a staple of hacking convention for a few years now.
Synacktiv confirmed that they had root access to Tesla’s system and claimed that they were able to “take over” the entire vehicle:
After completing their exploit in a hotel room, @_p0ly_ and @vdehors successfully hacked into the Tesla Model 3 infotainment system through bluetooth and elevated their privileges to root! Combined with the previous entry, this could be a complete series to take over the car!
Share this photo of our Model 3 infotainment tester:
Pwn2Own confirmed that it was a TOCTTOU exploit, which is described as:
A time-of-use check time (TOCTTOU – also pronounced TOCK) is a file-based race condition that occurs when a resource is checked for a certain value, such as whether a file exists, and then that value changes before the resource is used, invalidating the results Examination.
The results of these types of white hat hackers are always shared with companies in order to help make their products more secure.
As mentioned earlier, Tesla has invested heavily in cyber security.
We went into a lot of detail about Tesla’s cybersecurity efforts in our report on “Big Tesla HackWhen a hacker managed to take control of the entire Tesla fleet.
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