Tesla Model 3 Modded To Run Ubuntu (cleantechnica.com) 87
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: CleanTechnica is reporting that someone hacked the infotainment system of a Tesla Model 3 and got root access and installed Linux distribution Ubuntu. Redditor trsohmers is able to show an Ubuntu command shell running alongside the Tesla OS. Since Tesla supports a browser that allows you to visit any site, could this be leveraged into remote hacks? It could also mean that if Tesla sells a long-range version of the Model 3, but limits it via software, people might try to remove the block. One could potentially get a 15-day trial of full self-driving for free and extend that 15-day window forever. At least he had some guts messing with $50,000 hardware that phones home all the time. Will Tesla brick his car to attempt to disprove the security issue?
News for nerds! [Re:snap included] (Score:4, Insightful)
/. is news for nerds! Hacking stuff that isn't designed to be hacked IS what nerds do.
You must be new here.
Simplification for the general public (Score:2)
They managed to run bash, not "an Ubuntu command shell." There is no such thing anymore than there is "Ford gasoline."
In context, "an Ubuntu command shell" probably means "Bash as distributed by Ubuntu". It'd be a bit more of a stretch to expand "Ford gasoline" to "the gasoline that the Ford dealer's service department uses, which probably comes from the gas station on the lot next door to the dealer".
Feature not bug (Score:4, Interesting)
Tesla's run Ubuntu in their cars. It is put in there in the factory. If you peel away the UI on the screen you are supposed to find Ubuntu.
This would be news if this guy found Windows 10 in there.
Next headline:
Bottle of Heineken contains beer, a guy says after opening it...
Re:Feature not bug (Score:5, Funny)
Next headline:
Bottle of Heineken contains beer, a guy says after opening it...
now that would be news!
Windows Embedded Automotive exists (Score:2)
This would be news if this guy found Windows 10 in there.
How would it be any more news than, say, older versions of Ford Sync based on Windows Embedded Automotive [wikipedia.org]?
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It would be news because Tesla has openly stated that their OS is Ubuntu Linux. So if it is actually Windows, then they lied.
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>This would be news if this guy found Windows 10 in there.
We would have noticed the crashes by now . . .
hmm, gives new (and literal . . .) meaning to "blue screen of death"
hawk
Found the shorter (Score:5, Interesting)
> Will Tesla brick his car to attempt to disprove the security issue?
Tesla runs a bug bounty program. Recently there was an article where a guy accidentally social engineered his way to getting admin rights on the tesla forums, and instead of overreacting, they asked him to post on the bug bounty program to get it fixed.
On top of the web presence shit, their hardware hacking scopes are pretty neat as well. They accept submissions on car/infotainment/hardware flaws, and if you are a bona fide security researcher and ask nicely, they might even take steps to help you unbrick your hardware if you get stuck.
In my book, that's a decent way to run a bug bounty program.
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Just as long as it doesn't use the steering wheel and pedals for input
limits with reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for limiting the range has been pointed out previously, it causes more damage to the battery per charge cycle which makes the the warranty more likely to be invoked due to battery death. If you are voiding your warranty then hey, do whatever you like to your car, just don't expect them to honor the warranty.
I certainly hope they engineered the car to isolate it's entertainment console from the controls (and computer control systems) because if they didn't then there is a big security issue with that alone.
Re: limits with reasons (Score:1)
They do it with gasoline cars as well. It's setup with safe tuning in the ECU regarding air fuel ratios and timings to make a car more reliable to cater for all environments the car will be used in... Thus why you can make extra power from an aftermarket car tuner without any mechanical mods
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It's not about environments because modern cars are self tuning and they all have been ever since the addition of the O2 sensor, and mixture control. It's about emissions, MPG, and noise.
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The last time I had a bad O2 sensor, the car practically disabled itself and wouldn't go above 2nd gear.
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I certainly hope they engineered the car to isolate it's entertainment console from the controls (and computer control systems) because if they didn't then there is a big security issue with that alone.
They most certainly isolate the infotainment system.
While it's fairly stable, I've had episodes of unresponsiveness with the infotainment system.
I've rebooted it (white driving!) by holding down the two scroll wheels on the steering wheel at the same time for ~5 seconds. The system takes about 15-20 seconds to reboot and it does not effect driving performance at all.
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That shows separation, not isolation. I can reboot my computer while the servers at /. continue to host the site. Once my computer reboots I can then contact the /. servers. Your experience shows that they are separate computers but there could be a communications path between the two.
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I certainly hope they engineered the car to isolate it's entertainment console from the controls (and computer control systems) because if they didn't then there is a big security issue with that alone.
They most certainly isolate the infotainment system.
While it's fairly stable, I've had episodes of unresponsiveness with the infotainment system.
I've rebooted it (white driving!) by holding down the two scroll wheels on the steering wheel at the same time for ~5 seconds. The system takes about 15-20 seconds to reboot and it does not effect driving performance at all.
The fact that you can reboot the infotainment system while driving (I've done it, too), means that the driving systems are not dependent on the infotainment system for normal operation, it doesn't mean they're isolated from the infotainment system. I hope they are, but the one thing doesn't imply the other.
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They have to leave limited interconnectivity. Most infotainment systems behave differently depending on whether the vehicle is in drive. And they usually need to know is the engine is running or if you're draining the battery.
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They have to leave limited interconnectivity. Most infotainment systems behave differently depending on whether the vehicle is in drive. And they usually need to know is the engine is running or if you're draining the battery.
That can be done while still ensuring isolation of control signals. You can have a one-way data feed, or even bidirectional communication that is limited to exchanging specific data elements through a sort of mailbox. My guess is that it isn't done that way, though. We already know that the systems from other automakers are not isolated.
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I certainly hope they engineered the car to isolate it's entertainment console from the controls (and computer control systems) ...
Probably that was their intent. But things don't always get implemented according to the original vision.
I'm ordinarily in favor of hacking and tinkering. But I'd suggest that messing with the software/firmware in a vehicle that weighs about 2 tonnes, can travel at 140mph and has a battery pack likely containing about 150megajoules. is something that ought to be approached wi
Separate computers (Score:3)
It could also mean that if Tesla sells a long-range version of the Model 3, but limits it via software, people might try to remove the block. One could potentially get a 15-day trial of full self-driving for free and extend that 15-day window forever
I'm pretty sure that all cars are using separate computers for infotainment and motor control - one some consumer-based OS, and another a locked-down real-time OS. It would seem foolhardy to place much more than infotainment in the infotainment system.
Re: Separate computers (Score:5, Informative)
"There's no way they're spending any extra money on a separate computer for security purposes when there's a strong case to be made that software can be made sufficiently secure."
You have that backwards, though. It would cost more to make one computer that could do all of those jobs, because integration isn't free. It's actually cheaper to break it up, not least because each piece can be built to different standards.
Re: Separate computers (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly - it's cheaper and easier to build separate computers engineered for separate purposes. Making one computer that can support everything from realtime engine control to playing Atari games on the console, in a way that guarantees that nothing can interfere with the realtime operation of the car is a very hard (likely impossible) engineering problem, when everything is sharing one CPU and memory. For that pragmatic reason, there are many, many computers inside a Tesla, or any other modern car. There's one for running the infotainment system, which controls the UI and sound. There's a dedicated system that manages the batteries. There's the system running AutoPilot. There are dozens of little controllers for sensors and other devices. This allows each system to be engineered to its own needs, be powered on or off separately, replaced by systems from new suppliers, etc.
In particular, in the Tesla the infotainment system is separate from the system that drives the car. You can even "reboot the car" while driving, and not lose control of the car, because it's only rebooting the infotainment system, but the steering, brakes, etc., keep working.
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Given how cheap fairly powerful system on chip computers are these days, it seems like it wouldn't be very expensive to have discreet computers for car management, infotainment, etc.
In fact there's probably a reasonable argument that it's actually cheaper to have separate computers from an engineering standpoint; each one can be optimized for its specific function and debugged/improved more easily without having to worry about overhead from other contexts/processes/functionality.
That being said, I'm kind of
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In fact there's probably a reasonable argument that it's actually cheaper to have separate computers from an engineering standpoint; each one can be optimized for its specific function and debugged/improved more easily without having to worry about overhead from other contexts/processes/functionality.
There are tons of reasons to move the intelligence around the vehicle. Take for example climate servos. These used to all be vacuum-driven, now they are mostly gear reduction brushed motors, just like the typical R/C servo. Initially they all used to be just a dumb four-wire device with a pot and a motor, and you'd reverse the motor power in order to reverse the motor. Unfortunately when a flap gets stuck this often results in the HVAC head being damaged because that's where the motor driver is. If you put
Re: Separate computers (Score:2)
Tesla OS on my desktop. (Score:2)
Naaa Run KALI (Score:3)
Let me guess (Score:2)
"because we can"?
Re: Let me guess (Score:2)
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I had "because we can" attitude 30 years ago. Then I got annoyed of doing things nobody else needed, because "I could". So I stopped being a scientist to become an engineer for real users. Paradoxically, eventually my h-index went up as well :-)
Science is dead. It's over. What we see as advances in science: 90% is technology, 10% is very, very, very applied science.
Nobel Prize for Graphene? Come on... We already had it for Fullerenes. Full 7A resolution structure of the ribosome? Impressive, but technical.
S
Find Him! (Score:1)
And bring him to me!
His car. He can fuckin do whatever fuckin shit he wants to do with his fuckin car. Except fuck it. He can't do that. Maybe. Enough Musk doobies and booze he might think he could. But don't! Don't FUCK you car. Whatsamatter with these penquinistas that makes them want to FUCK cars? Weirdos!
Finally, what every linux fanatic dreams of (Score:4, Funny)
The year of the Dashboard! /s
Why arn't they seporate computers! (Score:2)
This has always been bugging me. The Information and Entertainment computer for your car shouldn't be part of the same computer that deals with functions of the car primary purpose, to drive, steer, accelerate, break in the most efficient way possible. Most of the features on your entertainment screen in your car you could do with a $20 Raspberry Pi as a separate computer and you can have hard wired read only drive information sent over to it. That way you can have all the internet access and hacking yo
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Why are those even computer controlled?
Don't you just need a capacitor and a relay?
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They are, what made you think they weren't? (Score:2)
full self-driving can't have any time out build in (Score:2)
full self-driving can't have any time out build in. Just think of it timing out and then just drop down to cruise control with no one manning the steering.
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Headline issues (Score:2)
For some reason I keep reading this headline as "Tesla 3 NEEDED to run Ubuntu". I'm like "That's not fully open source!".
Stupid (Score:2)
What a stupid thing to do to an expensive car. Once Tesla detects this (and they will) they will lose all access to updates and support destroying any resale value and very likely causing the car to brick itself due to "safety concerns".
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What one person called stupid is another's genius risk-taking.
For example, you have the autopilot hack here:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesl... [teslarati.com]
There's another guy selling a modification that enhances the newer Tesla's camera systems so you can effectively get a camera view 360 degrees around the vehicle, including a "bird's eye" top down view.