Researchers jailbreak a Tesla to get free in-car feature upgrades

"you wouldn't download an in-car feature"

I'm amazed that it's legal for a car company to sell you something, and then after you own it, remotely disable xyz aspects of the functionality unless you pay them more. How can that be legal? I own the car, it's MINE now, how can I not use every single thing that's in it?

Why are people buying this crap!? There are so many regular boring cars that just do things cars are supposed to do.

Cars already are bad why make them worse?

good. software locks are anti human and anti consumer. everyone inherently feels ripped off by them, but the more capitalist minded think 'oh that's the company's right to do'

if it's my property in my house I can fuck with it to do whatever I want

Yes! Back to jailbreaking!

The future sucks.

of course it was the PSP. I’ll say it again and again; secure computing is like adding a back door that you know about. Fuck intel me, fuck amd psp, fuck apple sep, fuck microsoft tpm, and fuck anyone who wants to have control over a device I own.

Can somebody build & sell a dumb electric car? Or at least one not permanently internet-enabled and/or that has no functionality and capabilities locked behind software and subscriptions?

Technological serfdom. You don't own anything anymore. You can perpetually rent from your lord or you can suffer the consequences.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A group of researchers said they have found a way to hack the hardware underpinning Tesla’s infotainment system, allowing them to get what normally would be paid upgrades — such as heated rear seats — for free.

This may also give owners the ability to enable the self-driving and navigation system in regions where it’s normally not available, the researchers told TechCrunch, though they admitted that they haven’t tested these capabilities yet, as that would require more reverse engineering.

“We are not the evil outsider, but we’re actually the insider, we own the car,” Werling told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of the conference.

Werling explained that what they did was “fiddle around” with the supply voltage of the AMD processor that runs the infotainment system.

With the same technique, the researchers said they were also able to extract the encryption key used to authenticate the car to Tesla’s network.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Heated rear seats I can get behind

Researchers jailbreak Tesla to allow usage of the entire car they purchased. FTFY

This looks to have already been discovered years ago as this company sells an OBD2 plug that can toggle all of this stuff, as well as highjacking some controls to add new functionality, as well as adding 50HP to those cars with a specific rear motor version https://ingenext.ca/products/ghost-upgrade

Is this method software only? Because the upgrades on that site are pretty expensive and proprietary.

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This is great. When you buy the car, you own it. I don’t care what kind of weird licenses and contracts they put together. If I buy the car and there is hardware in the car that allows for heated seats, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to enable it myself, tear it out, or do whatever I want with it. It is mine.

I can understand there being safety concerns for modifying a car. But the owner of the car already accepts liability for the operation of that car. If I do not modify the car and I get into an accident due to Teslas auto pilot feature or another thing baked into their system, does Tesla accept liability? No, they do not. If it is my responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle, then it is also my responsibility to modify a vehicle in a safe manner. 

Never buying any car with this type of tech.

If it's "our future" then I'll stick to used cars for life

Elon's going to have a hissy fit

"Researchers remove limits that shouldn't be there on features that are already part of the car"

Can't imagine a bigger "fuck you" to give to the Muskrat... other than when Xtwitter finally implodes.

"how to jailbreak your Mr coffee grinder and grind any beans you want!"

"5 hacks to get your doorbell to keep working without a subscription!"

"How to beat Microsoft Office drm to turn in assignments for free!"

"4 clever ways to keep your AC running all summer long for free, no CC required! #3 will shock you!"

GOOD!! I despise it when hardware features are held at ransom!

Quick question: Couldn't Tesla's telemetry servers detect this kind of jailbreaking and, say, remotely disable the device? I'm kind of thinking of Nintendo consoles and their bans on some jailbroken consoles (typically the ones that play pirated games online).

Why the heck would they install the equipment in the first place if it's only to block it???? Is that why the base model is so expensive? You're basically buying the deluxe version but are simply stuck using basic features because of the software???

How long the instructions would last if posted on Twitter?

https://youtu.be/PWQL_XORalY

It’s ridiculous how nowadays a lot of hardware car features are locked behind a simple software switch. Feels like both a massive waste of resources for people that don’t buy the upgrades, and like having to pay for a feature that is already physically present in your car. Software-only upgrades like full self driving are understandable, hardware upgrades locked behind a software gate aren’t.

[cross-posted from my reply to the same article on c/news]

“Researchers”

You mean Tesla job applicants.

ftfy

Muskovite builds vehicles with a built in micro-transaction PTW scheme? Hilarious.

This song was ahead of its time https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQL_XORalY and that time is now

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You mean I don't have to pay for the fart sound now?!

A lower hanging fruit is usually present in systems like this. I wonder if they've tried glitching because thats what they were familiar with it, or if the software was not easily exploitable.

So they did pretty much this https://youtu.be/vXe8pe18MNk