Researchers say they hacked a Tesla and got free upgrades

Tyler Wornell

(NewsNation) — A group of researchers claim they were able to hack the hardware in a Tesla vehicle and gain access to what would normally be paid upgrades.

The researchers told technology news outlet TechCrunch they were essentially able to “jailbreak” the car, or unlock certain features that otherwise wouldn’t be available in that particular model of the vehicle.

The vulnerability may also give owners the ability to access self-driving in regions it’s not normally available, but the researchers told TechCrunch more reverse engineering and testing would be required to confirm that.

The research will be presented next week at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. The session is titled “Jailbreaking an Electric Vehicle in 2023 or What It Means to Hotwire Tesla’s x86-Based Seat Heater.”

Christian Werling, one of the three students at Technische Universität Berlin who conducted the research along with another independent researcher, told TechCrunch the attack requires physical access to the car, which is the scenario where the jailbreak would be useful.

“We are not the evil outsider, but we’re actually the insider; we own the car,” Werling said in an interview. “And we don’t want to pay these $300 for the rear heated seats.”

The researchers used a technique called voltage glitching on the car’s AMD processor that then allowed them to run arbitrary software on the infotainment, unlocking features including rear heated seats.

The conference session description also notes they were able to extract personal user data including the phonebook and calendar entries.