Tesla’s Information and Entertainment System Successfully Hacked: Research Reveals AMD Chip Vulnerabilities
In an intriguing initiative, researchers from the Technical University of Berlin have developed a method to breach the information and entertainment system based on AMD chips used in modern Tesla cars, the researchers successfully made these cars capable of running any program of their choice after successfully hacking the system.
Benefits of the breach:
The achieved breach offers numerous benefits to the researchers, as it enables them to extract the unique hardware key used by Tesla to authenticate the car on its private service network, additionally, they can activate software lock features such as seat heating and rented acceleration enhancement.
Full details of the breach:
The German researchers shared the details of their hack with the tech website BleepingComputer, and these details are scheduled to be published in the upcoming BlackHat 2023 presentation after tomorrow.
Techniques used in the breach:
The researchers relied on previous research related to AMD chips and utilized techniques based on this research to breach Tesla’s information and entertainment system, these earlier studies revealed the possibility of exploiting vulnerabilities that could extract secrets from the platform.
Exploiting weaknesses for the hack:
The researchers capitalized on previously discovered weaknesses in Tesla’s APU (Automotive Processor Unit) for information and entertainment, which relies on the non-secure MD Zen 1 central processing unit, by obtaining root permissions, they were able to make changes that avoided system reboots and wireless software updates for Tesla.
Accessing sensitive information:
Furthermore, the researchers gained access to sensitive information stored in the car’s system and decrypted it, this information includes personal data of the car owner, phone directory, calendar entries, call logs, cookies for Gmail and Spotify sessions, Wi-Fi network passwords, and visited locations.
Future improvements and responsibility:
Tesla assures that it will address the discovered issues and work on enhancing the security of its information and entertainment system in its cars, the researchers consider this initiative a significant achievement and are eager to pursue further improvements in the future.
Claims regarding full self-driving feature:
With news about the breach spreading, some claims have emerged concerning the activation of the full self-driving feature in Tesla cars, however, the researchers deny the validity of these claims and assert that they are not accurate.
