3 ms·

Reading that just makes me think about how "wild west" self-driving cars seem to be, and most people seem to think that's acceptable. We have Teslas that don't

Reading that just makes me think about how "wild west" self-driving cars seem to be, and most people seem to think that's acceptable. We have Teslas that don't have anywhere near this kind of security or redundancy "autopiloting" themselves right now on highways. People seem to be ok with that because it's a car and not a plane. But the way I see it, there's thousands of those cars on the roads, and a software bug across the fleet could cause just as much damage as a plane crash.

nexuist 7y ago
>We have Teslas that don't have anywhere near this kind of security or redundancy "autopiloting" themselves right now on highways. Not just Teslas, modern vehicles in general. I would say that in terms of security Tesla is probably doing a more bang-up job than the other automakers; it was only a few years ago that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely killed a Grand Cherokee on the highway.
- skgoa 7y ago
  As an automotive security engineer, I have to interject. Miller and Valasek hacked into a car that was very far removed from what we consider modern automotive electronics. Any truly modern car will have decoupled networks with firewalls in-between. It will have intrusion detection systems, secure boot, signed code, encrypted memory, will communicate critical information via TLS etc. The Jeep hack (as well as their Toyota and Ford hacks) was exptremely important, because it put public pressure on the less technologically capable OEMs to get with the times and implement a (somewhat) secure electronics architecture. As someone who shares the road with those shitty cars I'm thankful for that. But even at the time of the hack, there were many OEMs whose cars were not anywhere close to that vulnerable and the industry hasn't stood still since then. And since you mention Tesla, I also have to point out that they are one of the worst at security. E.g. they have an RJ45 port behind the dash that you can just plug into. It used to be that this gave you complete access to everything, but people abused it. So Tesla made it a little bit harder, though not impossible, to get into their system. Tesla also has a lot of bugs in their smartphone integration that allow "fun" exploits like remote unlocking.

nexuist 7y ago

>We have Teslas that don't have anywhere near this kind of security or redundancy "autopiloting" themselves right now on highways. Not just Teslas, modern vehicles in general. I would say that in terms of security Tesla is probably doing a more bang-up job than the other automakers; it was only a few years ago that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely killed a Grand Cherokee on the highway.

skgoa 7y ago
As an automotive security engineer, I have to interject. Miller and Valasek hacked into a car that was very far removed from what we consider modern automotive electronics. Any truly modern car will have decoupled networks with firewalls in-between. It will have intrusion detection systems, secure boot, signed code, encrypted memory, will communicate critical information via TLS etc. The Jeep hack (as well as their Toyota and Ford hacks) was exptremely important, because it put public pressure on the less technologically capable OEMs to get with the times and implement a (somewhat) secure electronics architecture. As someone who shares the road with those shitty cars I'm thankful for that. But even at the time of the hack, there were many OEMs whose cars were not anywhere close to that vulnerable and the industry hasn't stood still since then. And since you mention Tesla, I also have to point out that they are one of the worst at security. E.g. they have an RJ45 port behind the dash that you can just plug into. It used to be that this gave you complete access to everything, but people abused it. So Tesla made it a little bit harder, though not impossible, to get into their system. Tesla also has a lot of bugs in their smartphone integration that allow "fun" exploits like remote unlocking.