Scenario: Undocumented immigrant family in Minneapolis get in their Tesla car to go to work, school or shopping. The doors lock and are disabled via software OTA. Because they are not mechanical, the family can’t open the doors. They try to roll down a window, but that too is software controlled. The buttons do nothing. They are trapped.
The car then disables the steering colums via OTA software so the wheel goes limp. It is a drive by wire steering with no mechanical, rack and pinion physical link for the driver to control.
The cars autodrive engages and sends the trapped family to an ICE detention facility.
Is there any design feature stopping this from from hapening today?
There are researches who have already shown it’s possible to see a cars location, stop it, and unlock it’s doors. People have also hacked into car cameras and seen in peoples homes etc. Also due to Biden’s 2024(?) Infrastructure Act all new cars built have a kill switch that’s accessible by a “3rd party”. Besides the 3rd party, no backdoor can be made that can’t also be accessed by good hackers
This is why I keep saying the future aucks. Bring back 1999 please. Cars were perfect until about 2010. People were way to willing to give in to surveillance for sake of convenience. But humans are stupid and lazy above all.
I totally agree. Luckily for me I have an old mechanically operated car that I plan to keep forever.
So the family being delivered to ICE has to hope a benevolent hacker community can somehow hack that particular vehicle within the 20 minute window of a drive to a concentration camp? Does this sound reasonable to you?
Does Biden’s law, or any for that matter have real impact today?
Is this 3rd party control easily removed with a software update?
Your answer is deeply disatisfying.
I suppose maybe in the future as car hacking gets more common and attrocities from our government worse, there might be hackers viewing protests from the sidelines specifically waiting for these situations.
I haven’t heard of a situation in which a kill switches was activated. This does not mean it hasn’t happened. The fact that it exists can only lead to exploitation in the future. It’s also being normalized as people don’t speak against it.
No. I’m a mechanic and learning to hack. All car systems are different. One day when I’m confident in my abilities I’ll share my knowledge to help others.
Unfortunately yes