Tesla’s newest electric car was recently targeted by researchers at French offensive hacking shop Synacktiv at the annual Pwn2Own software exploitation contest. The researchers were able to demonstrate a pair of successful exploit chains against the car to take top billing at the event. Pwn2Own organizers confirmed the successful hacks exploited flaws in the Tesla-Gateway and Tesla-Infotainment sub-systems to “fully compromise” the car.
The first Tesla hack, described as a TOCTOU (time-of-check to time-of-use) race condition, earned the hackers a $100,000 cash prize and ownership of the compromised car. The second hack used a heap overflow and an out-of-band (OOB) write vulnerability to pop the Tesla-Infotainment system and was described as “Unconfined Root”. This earned the Synacktiv team a $250,000 cash prize. Tesla security response team was on site at the event and validated the findings.
Tesla is a Pwn2Own co-sponsor and is using the annual contest to incentivize security researchers to showcase complex exploit chains that can lead to complete vehicle compromise. This year, the organizers were looking to attract exploits targeting Tesla’s Tuner, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Modem components.
Tesla has sought to attract the attention of advanced exploit writers at Pwn2Own for a few years now. In 2019, the company gave away a Tesla Model 3 to a pair of researchers demonstrating successful exploits and this year the organizers plan to raise the level of complexity of what constitutes a successful car-hacking exploit.
In conclusion, the Synacktiv team was successful in exploiting the Tesla Model 3 car at the Pwn2Own software exploitation contest. The exploits used flaws in the Tesla-Gateway and Tesla-Infotainment sub-systems to “fully compromise” the car, earning the hackers a $100,000 cash prize and ownership of the compromised car and a $250,000 cash prize for the second hack. Tesla is a Pwn2Own co-sponsor and using the annual contest to incentivize security researchers to showcase complex exploit chains that can lead to complete vehicle compromise.
Key Points:
– Researchers at French offensive hacking shop Synacktiv demonstrated a pair of successful exploit chains against Tesla’s newest electric car at the Pwn2Own software exploitation contest
– The successful hacks exploited flaws in the Tesla-Gateway and Tesla-Infotainment sub-systems to “fully compromise” the car
– The first Tesla hack earned the hackers a $100,000 cash prize and ownership of the compromised car; the second hack earned a $250,000 cash prize
– Tesla is a Pwn2Own co-sponsor and using the annual contest to incentivize security researchers to showcase complex exploit chains that can lead to complete vehicle compromise