On January 13, a 19-year-old German hacker, David Colombo, claimed to have discovered vulnerabilities in the Tesla car system through computer technology and successfully controlled 25 Tesla cars in 13 countries around the world, allowing them to open and close windows, doors, headlights, play music or start the car directly without using the car key. And the owners don't know anything about it.
David Colombo wrote online: "I think it would be quite dangerous if someone was able to remotely play full-volume music or open doors and windows on the highway. Even if the lights are constantly flashed, it may have some dangerous effects on other drivers. ”
However, he did not blame Tesla's infrastructure for these vulnerabilities in Tesla Motors, and the hacker believes that the problem lies with the owner, perhaps because some of the owner's habits or privacy leaks caused the car to be controlled.
David Colombo also did not use these vulnerabilities to do bad things, he has voluntarily informed Tesla's security department of his "hacking behavior", and they are further investigating. David Colombo said that when Tesla fixes the vulnerabilities, he may make further details of them public.
Tesla once issued a notice of a bug bounty, who can find out the vulnerability of Tesla cars, if the problem is significant, the person who found it is likely to get a $15,000 bonus. Therefore, there are many technical experts around the world who are staring at the safety of Tesla cars.
On November 20, 2021, Tesla once caused many car owners to be locked out of the car because of the disconnection, because these owners are usually accustomed to using mobile phone APP to open the door.
Musk
At that time, Tesla CEO Musk also publicly apologized, and the day after the incident, 360 founder Zhou Hongyi expressed his views on this, he wrote:
This incident shows that intelligent connected cars must be connected to the cloud servers of car companies, driven by continuous uploading of driving status data and accepting remote commands. This time, the impact of the owner's failure to open the car door may not be large, but if it is attacked by hackers, it may threaten driving safety and personal safety. ”
Zhou Hongyi also revealed: "According to statistics, in 2020, nearly 1/3 of the car network attacks were launched through cloud servers. ”
In January 2021, Zhou Hongyi also revealed that his team found that Tesla cars shipped after 2017 had security vulnerabilities and could be controlled remotely. And when Lao Zhou told Musk about the loophole, he annoyed Musk and directly ignored him.
Zhou Hongyi
However, the safety problem of electric vehicles cannot be avoided, after all, it is related to the privacy and life safety of car owners.
Tesla, as the leader of the global electric vehicle company, they are now encountering problems that other electric vehicle brands may also encounter. The entire car-making industry should be vigilant about the safety of automotive software systems, and new Chinese car-making forces such as Wei Xiaoli are no exception.