Skip to content
0:00 / 0:00

#tesla#canbus#defcon

DEF CON 23 - Marc Rogers and Kevin Mahaffey - How to Hack a Tesla Model S

DEFCONConference

419K subscribers • 61 videos on Hallway • Conference channel

YouTube
  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Marc Rogers and Kevin Mahaffey

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

83K views10 years ago1 recommendation

SecuritySystems programmingExploits and vulnerabilitiesEmbedded systemsNetworking and protocols

Marc Rogers and Kevin Mahaffey explain the security architecture of the Tesla Model S and demonstrate how they hacked its systems.

The Tesla Model S is the most connected car in the world. It might surprise you to hear that it is also one of the most secure. In this talk we will walk you through the architecture of a Tesla Model S noting things that Tesla got right as well as identifying those that they got wrong. From this talk you will get an intimate understanding of how the many interconnected systems in a Tesla model S work and most importantly how they can be hacked. You will also get a good understanding of the data that this connected car collects and what Tesla does with this telemetry. We will also be releasing a tool that will enable Tesla Model S owners to view and analyse that telemetry in real time. Finally we will also be releasing several 0day vulnerabilities that will allow you to hack a Tesla Model S yourself - both locally and remotely. Note - only one of the 6 vulnerabilities we will discuss and release has been fixed. Disclaimer: With great access comes great responsibility - In other words we are not responsible for any Tesla Model S bricked by over enthusiastic attendees of this talk :) Speaker Bios: Marc Rogers aka Cyberjunky has been a prominent member of the hacking scene since the 80’s. Some of his most notable achievements are co-founding the notorious British hacker group, “The Agents of a Hostile Power” and his role in creating and appearing in the award winning BBC TV series “The Real Hustle”. Marc’s professional career spans more than twenty years, including a decade managing security for the UK operator Vodafone. Marc is currently the principal security researcher for web optimization and security company “CloudFlare. As well as his work in the infosec and telecoms industries, Marc has also been a CISO in South Korea and co-founder of a disruptive Bay Area start-up. Some of Marc’s notable recent hacks include Google Glass, Apple TouchID and most recently the Tesla Model S. Kevin is an entrepreneur and technologist with a background in mobile and web technology, security, and privacy. He is the CTO of Lookout, a company dedicated making the world a safer place as it becomes more connected, starting with smartphones and tablets. He co-founded Lookout in 2007 and is responsible for driving Lookout’s technology to protect people from current and future threats while keeping the product simple and easy to use. He started building software when he was 8 years old and it has been a love affair ever since. Kevin is a frequent speaker on security, privacy, mobile, and other topics.

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Recommended as an excellent case study in automotive security, highlighting Tesla's gateway architecture and isolation of critical systems.

bradleybudaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System”

At DEF CON 23 there were two car-hacking talks that made an impression on me: one about hacking a Tesla 1 and one about hacking a Jeep 2. FWIW, I came away thinking that the software architecture of the Tesla was light-years ahead of what Jeep (and presumably many other legacy manufacturers) was shipping: 1 link to this video 2 link

swedenon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Gentoo Tesla – T2 Edition”

…le car while the first guy was riding. The interesting thing is that for higher speeds, for example more than 50 km/h, the car seems to override any of the Linux systems and the root access becomes useless, it stops working. In another words, the car is able to decouple itself from the Tesla OS. You can check the presentation from those guys here: link to this video…

toomuchtodoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “This Time, Miller and Valasek Hack the Jeep at Speed”

Indeed. Sending CAN frames directly is essentially a remote privilege escalation (think sudo user with no password). One of the shining examples of this done properly is Tesla; they have a gateway that you can issue commands to over the internal network, but it alone issues the CAN commands. You cannot issue CAN commands directly. link to this video

toomuchtodoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System”

Ignoring the infotainment system for this argument (as they firewall it off from CANBUS and other life critical systems 1), I argue that their IT infrastructure is safety related, as it governs Tesla's velocity in getting patches and security fixes out to vehicles in a timely manner. Can you imagine a zero day being found in Windows with Windows Update being down? 1 link to this video

Qub3don Hacker News • Mentions

On “Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System”

Thankfully, the critical reactive components of the Tesla vehicles do seem to be run by an RTOS -- spesifically FreeRTOS 0. 0: link to this video