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?
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