A team of cybersecurity specialists from the Berlin University of Technology have hacked into the on-board electronics of a Tesla Model 3 and found that it had an ‘Elon Mode’ that you could use to remove the restrictions of the car’s Autopilot system. The Daily Mail adds that they also obtained access to the driver’s protected personal data and were able to unlock features Tesla normally charges money for.
The results of the hacking attempt were shared by a team of university aspirants at the Chaos Computer Club congress in Germany. They used hardware worth roughly €600 in order to obtain root privileges in the system. They deliberately caused voltage surges to force the on-board computer to glitch out. Although they succeeded in their attempt, they admitted that it required a direct wired connection to the car; remote access wouldn’t work.
The Elon Mode that Tesla Inc. never officially announced apparently lets drivers to turn on and use the car’s Autopilot feature without having to keep hands on the steering wheel. Whether it was actually implemented as a security override for Elon Musk is unknown.
In addition to the above, the hackers were able to retrieve the driver’s personal data including their phone book, calendar and the coordinates of all recent rides. They also discovered that they could activate paid features such as rear seat heating and speed boost free of charge.