As any Tesla customer will know, the company’s vehicles do not quite offer fully autonomous driving.
Tesla’s Autopilot mode takes over certain tasks such as lane centering, but the driver needs to keep touching the wheel to show he or she is ready to take over at all times.
However, it seems a hidden mode – known as ‘Elon Mode’ – built-in to Tesla cars overrides this and if activated it could lead to more accidents.
German researchers have hacked a Tesla Model 3 by manipulating its inner circuitry, using equipment costing around 600 euros (£520).
Not only were they able to access ‘critical data’ about the car, but they found code that confirmed the setting, which hasn’t been officially acknowledged by Tesla.
Tesla’s Autopilot mode takes over certain tasks such as lane centering, but the driver needs to keep touching the wheel to show he or she is ready to take over at all times. However, it seems a hidden mode built-in to Tesla cars overrides this – known as ‘Elon Mode’
The research was conducted by Christian Werling, Niclas Kühnapfel and Hans Niklas Jacob, three PhD students at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin).
They presented their results at the Chaos Computer Club hacking congress in Hamburg, Germany on Wednesday.
‘We demonstrate our voltage glitching attack on Tesla Autopilot, enabling us root privileges on the system,’ they said in a statement.
‘The attack enables us to extract arbitrary code and user data from the system.’
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