Researchers at the University of Berlin have found a way to unlock many Tesla options for free, including the Full Self-Driving service.
The giant Tesla is not only the world number 1 in electric vehicles, but the American brand is also at the forefront in the field of autonomous driving, despite fierce competition from other manufacturers. A reputation that it owes in particular to its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, which would however have a flaw.
Free FSD
What if you could avoid paying to be able to benefit from all the services available within your Tesla? An ambition certainly illegal, but not infeasible according to researchers at the Technical University of Berlin. A team from this institution has just announced that it has succeeded in finding a fault, through the firm’s infotainment system.
Thanks to the latter, they say they are able to unlock many paid updates for free, such as heated rear seats, or, and this is even more annoying for Elon Musk’s firm, the Full autonomous driving system. Self-Driving.
An untouchable flaw?
How did the German team pull off this little feat? By attacking not the software part, but directly the hardware, using an attack by voltage fault injection. With the right timing, and obviously physical access to the vehicle, the processor “ hiccups, skips a statement, and accepts our manipulated code. This is in a nutshell what we do », explains the doctoral student, Christian Werling.
And the operation would be fruitful, since it would make it possible to obtain, in addition to free access to the service, a lot of personal information about the driver (GPS positions, contacts, call history, etc.). The scientists also explain that it would be necessary to work directly on each car to implement a fix. They plan to share these findings next week at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference.
Source : Engadget
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