Tesla Vehicle Hacked Via Drone

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Vehicles connected to the network offer plenty of advantages, but they can also be a target to cyber attacks.

A Tesla car was hacked remotely from a drone carrying a Wi-Fi dongle by security researchers who wanted to demonstrate the possibility. They succeeded in opening the vehicle’s doors without requiring any interaction from anyone in the car. 

The bugs were patched in October last year, so the hack shouldn’t be possible today. 

The ‘attackers’ from Kunnamon and Comsecuris could’ve used the flaws to “compromise parked cars and control their infotainment systems over WiFi,” they wrote in a post promoting their so-called TBONE hack. “It would be possible for an attacker to unlock the doors and trunk, change seat positions, both steering and acceleration modes – in short, pretty much what a driver pressing various buttons on the console can do. This attack does not yield drive control of the car though.”

The attacks targeted a component called ConnMan, accessible over Wi-Fi and used to manage network connections. The vulnerable component is also used by other cars, according to forbes.com.

Watch the drone hack, using a DJI Mavic 2 and a Tesla Model X, from minute 36: