8 ms·

Man Accidentally Drove Away in Someone Else’s Tesla Using the Car’s App

63 points by mseidl 4y ago

JohnFen 4y ago
This story blows my mind. I can't imagine how this problem wasn't found during testing.
- dahdum 4y ago
  They ship cars with steering wheels that fall off, this is pretty tame in comparison.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  What testing?
- chc 4y ago
  If the least few months have taught us anything, it's that Elon Musk is not big on testing things before they go to production.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Tesla ships 400k cars per quarter. AFAIK this is the only case reported of this. It sounds like BS.
- pengaru 4y ago
  At a former SaaS startup my colleague rolled out some updates that affected an apache module's connection pooling persistence defaults. Everything had worked fine in his testing, but once in production there was enough concurrency to make this change in caching behavior matter. One customer's web login would spuriously see another customer's content, it all seemed completely random. A similar change (or rare bug) could easily result in one customer's boolean "yes they're allowed" reach another who should have received "no they're not". There's all sorts of opportunities in the backend to cross such streams, especially things that need to scale and do a lot of caching.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > Everything had worked fine in his testing I sure hope that startup learned that dev testing is not sufficient!
    - pengaru 4y ago
      > I sure hope that startup learned that dev testing is not sufficient! Bankrupt after burning >100M of VC money, but from causes far deeper than lack of testing.
psadri 4y ago
Last year, I found true my Tesla VIN was used to register a car in a different state. I never received the CA renewal notice, then eventually got a “driving with no registration” citation, and had to pay something like a $1k penalty to get it resolved. I never figured out how the same VIN was used? Point being - perhaps ids can accidentally be reused or mis-entered into some system?
- ksherlock 4y ago
  Cars have 2-4 VIN number plates in various locations and Teslas have a reputation for mismatched VINs.
kobalsky 4y ago
This has to be fake. So much stuff need to happen for two devices to interact securely that there's seems to be no chain of events that could make this possible. Either the app goes through their servers and back to the car, which would make it impossible to unlock the wrong car, or through BLE, which would make it easy to verify through digital signatures that the other device is who they say.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  I agree it doesn't feel right. I have a Tesla, and often come out and find other Teslas parked right to mine. Sometimes 4 or 5. At some point, someone would've been able to unlock mine and done something to my car. Or similar settings anywhere else. I think we'd have heard this story more than once if it was possible. EDIT: I grant the possibilities outlined by the responders to my post... still, I'll put a little $$ on this getting clarified otherwise in the coming weeks -- but not any more than that, as I've lost a $ in this week's banking crisis.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    It could be a rare hash collision. It wouldn't happen to you but with millions of Teslas out there it would happen to somebody. I wouldn't be surprised if this were real.
  - robryk 4y ago
    There's always the first time you hear a particular story. There's a continuously increasing mapping from how likely such an event is to when you should expect to hear about it for the first time.
  - 83 4y ago
    People who drive Teslas are usually pretty well off, probably not the type to risk arrest by rummaging around in another person's car.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      That seems like a nonsequitor to me. I don't think that being well-off correlates to whether or not someone is willing to violate the law. And I don't think that, in this situation, rummaging through the car to find contact info is actually illegal.
newfonewhodis 4y ago
> Randev said he attempted to reach out to Tesla with video evidence of the issue, but all he’s gotten from the automaker is radio silence.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  I hope that they'll publish that video if Tesla doesn't get back to them. I'd love to see how it actually works.
  - antx 4y ago
    Indeed. I don't understand how that worked. You need to create a "phone key" in the app to unlock / use the car. You do that by swiping your card key once. Those keys can't be used in different cars unless something very fishy is going on.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    Seems like the kind of thing that needs to get handed off to the researchers who figured out how to hack into Jeeps OTA or the like.
irrational 4y ago
People have lots of trouble with Paypal (e.g., accounts being locked). People have lots of trouble with Tesla. Twitter has been a complete disaster since Elon took over. So... how in the world has SpaceX managed to do so well?
- klodolph 4y ago
  SpaceX has a management structure which has evolved to babysit Musk and mitigate the damage that he does to the organization. Keep in mind that PayPal is basically in the same boat as systems like Venmo and Cash App (Zelle is a little different). They all have problems. Musk’s main contribution to PayPal was actually x.com. X.com got absorbed into PayPal and PayPal is somewhat different from Musk’s vision for x.com.
  - mseidl 4y ago
    https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/biztech/articles/28secure.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/... Peter Thiel came out with confinity, then 1 year later x.com launched. They for some reason merged. Musk wanted to keep the name x.com Jusk was fired before it became paypal.
- clint 4y ago
  Because Elon Musk doesn't run SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell does.
- shagmin 4y ago
  He was more or less fired as CEO of Paypal IIRC, but I'd be hard-pressed to call it a failure either way. Overall I'd say he's done quite well but the world is full of people that were great in one venture and then failed miserably in another.
dgrin91 4y ago
This smells like BS to me. I've been in similar situations - in a rush I run to a tesla that looks like mine on the street, near where I parked. When I try to open it though I can't I get frustrated for a minute before I realize I'm a dunce and my identical looking car is 2 spots over. Everything worked there as expected. This other random car didn't open. The way these key pairing systems are built it wouldn't really make sense for it to open or start. Thats why to me this smells like BS.
terhechte 4y ago
Story Time: In an older, much less technical world, the VW Golf 1 and Golf 2 had only N different keys for all models. So instead of having a unique key for each Golf, VW had (I forgot the number) 1000 or 10000 different keys that were assigned randomly. I thought this was a myth until back in 99, my friends white, old Golf 2 was parked next to another white, old Golf 2. When we wanted to enter, there was sleeping guy in there. His Golf was parked next to ours. It was evening, he was tired, instead of driving home (the Golfs were parked outside a club) he had opened the Golf gotten in and fallen asleep. Just that he had entered the wrong Golf, because (even though very unlikely) there were to similar-looking golfs with the same keys next to each other (and it was dark).
- 2020aj 4y ago
  Funny story: house locks work the same way (I think usually ~1024 possible key configurations, depending on the lock). When my wife and I were dating we discovered that our apartment keys worked in each other's locks!
  - thakoppno 4y ago
    Was it your wife’s idea to move in together?
  - buzzert 4y ago
    It was meant to be!
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Much worse, Ford had a small set of fleet keys where every fleet vehicle of a set of types would have the exact same key for several model years. I bought an old cargo van which had been a Comcast installation vehicle and they had sabotaged the lock on the rear door because of this.
  - cptcobalt 4y ago
    I seem to recall that there's a Defcon talk to this extent—one of the many that talk about locks and keys—that shares that (some) police cruisers across the US use the exact same keys, proven by showing the showing a monroney label on a still new police car which listed a barrel type had an already publicly-known key pattern.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Dialup internet sound, otherwise known as “calling a fax line”
jedberg 4y ago
Back in the 80s, GM only had like 10,000 key barrels that they used for all GM cars. That meant that you had a 1/10,000 chance of unlocking another GM car with your GM key. Didn't even have to be the same model or maker, as long as it was GM. They solved this by adding the little chip to the key, so that even if you could open the door, you couldn't start the car with the wrong key, because it would read the chip in the ignition barrel. My uncle was involved in the testing and got to drive a Corvette for a while because that was the first model they tried it on.
- wil421 4y ago
  My old Toyotas (early 2000s models) had the chip in the key. A third spare didn’t have it so I taped it under my bumper. One of my keys because so dull it wouldn’t unlock the door anymore. We got a key off eBay and programmed it. The sequence to start the programming was pretty cool. It was something like turn the ignition key to specific places, press the brake a set number of times, and some other combos. Here’s an example. https://youtu.be/0Mbu_YDHGqc https://youtu.be/0Mbu_YDHGqc
  - Arrath 4y ago
    I call these "car cheat codes". Even modern vehicles often have some of these, hiding options (like turning off the "BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELT!!!" alarm) that the manufacturer may not want readily available. They can be kind of fun to enter correctly.
    - wil421 4y ago
      That reminds me I removed the seat belt chime in my last Grand Cherokee because I had a big dog sitting in the back.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Apparently FIAT had many few times less key barrels for their Uno model in the 80s. I remember a story about a car that used to be parked in a street. It was along the lines of - Son, did you drove the Uno today? - I did. - And you filled up the tank, thanks! - Nope, I didn't, no money for that. - So, who did it? - Mmm, was my bag in the car? - Nope. - Oops!
danbruc 4y ago
How can you not notice that you are in the wrong car? Different people have different stuff lying around in their cars. Stickers, scratches, dents, dirt. Cars smell differently.
- skhr0680 4y ago
  Drunk
- vikingerik 4y ago
  If it's late and dark, you're tired and not noticing things, and both cars are mostly clean inside, it would be quite possible to make that mistake.
  - danbruc 4y ago
    And the same seat and correct mirror positions? Sure, it is not impossible, but I have a hard time imagining that one would not notice driving away in the wrong car.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  I definitely don't have a lot of stuff lying around in my cabin. At the moment the only things visible in the cabinet are an electronic parking disc and a 12V two-port USB charger. If I encountered a clean car with the same interior colours as mine, I might not immediately notice it.
- brewtide 4y ago
  Long ago I was tasked with swapping someone's Porsche off to them at their house, as the service writer the evening before had given the customer the wrong car. Both black. One a panamera (so?) 4, one a 4s. One with dealer plates (the one they ended up taking home..) , one with a custom plate. So, after showing up to this persons house (through a golf course, up a winding top of the hill driveway), I knocked on his door and asked him the same question (after apologizing for the workers mistake). "Oh, well, it was evening and the radio stations were programmed in the same, so I just didn't even think about it. In the morning I said "well, that's strange, usually they wash the car nicely before returning it -- then I realized it wasn't my car". Guy was super down to earth about it, not a care at all and the exchange was very pleasant. Point being: some people just really go with the flow, and even with 100k+ cars 20 years ago, sometimes just don't really pay attention to, well, much of anything. Bigger fish to fry, I guess. I'll never forget the whole interaction, fully expecting a grumpy person and coming face to face with "eh, life!".
ARandomerDude 4y ago
> “After five, 10 minutes I got a text on my phone that said ‘Rajesh are you driving [a] Tesla,’” he explained to the outlet. Randev went on to say the person who messaged him told him he was driving the wrong car. > all he’s gotten from the automaker is radio silence So...where did the text come from? No indication that the police were involved in the article. How did the other Tesla owner get his cell number? This story seems implausible to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Rhedox 4y ago
  > When the two Tesla owners met up, the rightful owner of the car Randev was driving told him he’d found Randev’s phone number on a document inside Randev’s car. That means, if you’re following along, the other guy was able to gain access to Randev’s Tesla as well. Wild.
  - DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
    That makes it even less plausible! Teslas have been around for years. If people could unlock each others cars we’d have heard about it a long time ago.
    - croes 4y ago
      Maybe you need specific circumstances to make it happen
- joevandyk 4y ago
  The article states: > When the two Tesla owners met up, the rightful owner of the car Randev was driving told him he’d found Randev’s phone number on a document inside Randev’s car.
- mh8h 4y ago
  From the original story on Global: > Randev said the other Tesla driver told him he was able to get his number because he had printed out a document, which was in his car and it had his phone number on it.
zamadatix 4y ago
This is the kind of thing where the lack of a traditional PR presence hurts Tesla. I'd like to say the story sounds unlikely but at the same time there is nothing about it that says impossible. If they aren't going to respond with what looks to have happened from their system's point of view then it's hard to give them unilateral benefit of the doubt whenever these kinds of stories come out. Some problems are real, others aren't, and it's not feasible to say which this is right now.

63 points by mseidl 4y ago

JohnFen 4y ago

This story blows my mind. I can't imagine how this problem wasn't found during testing.

dahdum 4y ago
They ship cars with steering wheels that fall off, this is pretty tame in comparison.
curiousgal 4y ago
What testing?
chc 4y ago
If the least few months have taught us anything, it's that Elon Musk is not big on testing things before they go to production.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Tesla ships 400k cars per quarter. AFAIK this is the only case reported of this. It sounds like BS.
pengaru 4y ago
At a former SaaS startup my colleague rolled out some updates that affected an apache module's connection pooling persistence defaults. Everything had worked fine in his testing, but once in production there was enough concurrency to make this change in caching behavior matter. One customer's web login would spuriously see another customer's content, it all seemed completely random. A similar change (or rare bug) could easily result in one customer's boolean "yes they're allowed" reach another who should have received "no they're not". There's all sorts of opportunities in the backend to cross such streams, especially things that need to scale and do a lot of caching.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Everything had worked fine in his testing I sure hope that startup learned that dev testing is not sufficient!
  - pengaru 4y ago
    > I sure hope that startup learned that dev testing is not sufficient! Bankrupt after burning >100M of VC money, but from causes far deeper than lack of testing.

psadri 4y ago

Last year, I found true my Tesla VIN was used to register a car in a different state. I never received the CA renewal notice, then eventually got a “driving with no registration” citation, and had to pay something like a $1k penalty to get it resolved. I never figured out how the same VIN was used? Point being - perhaps ids can accidentally be reused or mis-entered into some system?

ksherlock 4y ago
Cars have 2-4 VIN number plates in various locations and Teslas have a reputation for mismatched VINs.

kobalsky 4y ago

This has to be fake. So much stuff need to happen for two devices to interact securely that there's seems to be no chain of events that could make this possible. Either the app goes through their servers and back to the car, which would make it impossible to unlock the wrong car, or through BLE, which would make it easy to verify through digital signatures that the other device is who they say.

browningstreet 4y ago
I agree it doesn't feel right. I have a Tesla, and often come out and find other Teslas parked right to mine. Sometimes 4 or 5. At some point, someone would've been able to unlock mine and done something to my car. Or similar settings anywhere else. I think we'd have heard this story more than once if it was possible. EDIT: I grant the possibilities outlined by the responders to my post... still, I'll put a little $$ on this getting clarified otherwise in the coming weeks -- but not any more than that, as I've lost a $ in this week's banking crisis.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It could be a rare hash collision. It wouldn't happen to you but with millions of Teslas out there it would happen to somebody. I wouldn't be surprised if this were real.
- robryk 4y ago
  There's always the first time you hear a particular story. There's a continuously increasing mapping from how likely such an event is to when you should expect to hear about it for the first time.
- 83 4y ago
  People who drive Teslas are usually pretty well off, probably not the type to risk arrest by rummaging around in another person's car.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    That seems like a nonsequitor to me. I don't think that being well-off correlates to whether or not someone is willing to violate the law. And I don't think that, in this situation, rummaging through the car to find contact info is actually illegal.

newfonewhodis 4y ago

> Randev said he attempted to reach out to Tesla with video evidence of the issue, but all he’s gotten from the automaker is radio silence.

Hamuko 4y ago
I hope that they'll publish that video if Tesla doesn't get back to them. I'd love to see how it actually works.
- antx 4y ago
  Indeed. I don't understand how that worked. You need to create a "phone key" in the app to unlock / use the car. You do that by swiping your card key once. Those keys can't be used in different cars unless something very fishy is going on.
- Arrath 4y ago
  Seems like the kind of thing that needs to get handed off to the researchers who figured out how to hack into Jeeps OTA or the like.

irrational 4y ago

People have lots of trouble with Paypal (e.g., accounts being locked). People have lots of trouble with Tesla. Twitter has been a complete disaster since Elon took over. So... how in the world has SpaceX managed to do so well?

klodolph 4y ago
SpaceX has a management structure which has evolved to babysit Musk and mitigate the damage that he does to the organization. Keep in mind that PayPal is basically in the same boat as systems like Venmo and Cash App (Zelle is a little different). They all have problems. Musk’s main contribution to PayPal was actually x.com. X.com got absorbed into PayPal and PayPal is somewhat different from Musk’s vision for x.com.
- mseidl 4y ago
  https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/biztech/articles/28secure.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/... Peter Thiel came out with confinity, then 1 year later x.com launched. They for some reason merged. Musk wanted to keep the name x.com Jusk was fired before it became paypal.
clint 4y ago
Because Elon Musk doesn't run SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell does.
shagmin 4y ago
He was more or less fired as CEO of Paypal IIRC, but I'd be hard-pressed to call it a failure either way. Overall I'd say he's done quite well but the world is full of people that were great in one venture and then failed miserably in another.

dgrin91 4y ago

This smells like BS to me. I've been in similar situations - in a rush I run to a tesla that looks like mine on the street, near where I parked. When I try to open it though I can't I get frustrated for a minute before I realize I'm a dunce and my identical looking car is 2 spots over. Everything worked there as expected. This other random car didn't open. The way these key pairing systems are built it wouldn't really make sense for it to open or start. Thats why to me this smells like BS.

terhechte 4y ago

Story Time: In an older, much less technical world, the VW Golf 1 and Golf 2 had only N different keys for all models. So instead of having a unique key for each Golf, VW had (I forgot the number) 1000 or 10000 different keys that were assigned randomly. I thought this was a myth until back in 99, my friends white, old Golf 2 was parked next to another white, old Golf 2. When we wanted to enter, there was sleeping guy in there. His Golf was parked next to ours. It was evening, he was tired, instead of driving home (the Golfs were parked outside a club) he had opened the Golf gotten in and fallen asleep. Just that he had entered the wrong Golf, because (even though very unlikely) there were to similar-looking golfs with the same keys next to each other (and it was dark).

2020aj 4y ago
Funny story: house locks work the same way (I think usually ~1024 possible key configurations, depending on the lock). When my wife and I were dating we discovered that our apartment keys worked in each other's locks!
- thakoppno 4y ago
  Was it your wife’s idea to move in together?
- buzzert 4y ago
  It was meant to be!
colechristensen 4y ago
Much worse, Ford had a small set of fleet keys where every fleet vehicle of a set of types would have the exact same key for several model years. I bought an old cargo van which had been a Comcast installation vehicle and they had sabotaged the lock on the rear door because of this.
- cptcobalt 4y ago
  I seem to recall that there's a Defcon talk to this extent—one of the many that talk about locks and keys—that shares that (some) police cruisers across the US use the exact same keys, proven by showing the showing a monroney label on a still new police car which listed a barrel type had an already publicly-known key pattern.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Dialup internet sound, otherwise known as “calling a fax line”

jedberg 4y ago

Back in the 80s, GM only had like 10,000 key barrels that they used for all GM cars. That meant that you had a 1/10,000 chance of unlocking another GM car with your GM key. Didn't even have to be the same model or maker, as long as it was GM. They solved this by adding the little chip to the key, so that even if you could open the door, you couldn't start the car with the wrong key, because it would read the chip in the ignition barrel. My uncle was involved in the testing and got to drive a Corvette for a while because that was the first model they tried it on.

wil421 4y ago
My old Toyotas (early 2000s models) had the chip in the key. A third spare didn’t have it so I taped it under my bumper. One of my keys because so dull it wouldn’t unlock the door anymore. We got a key off eBay and programmed it. The sequence to start the programming was pretty cool. It was something like turn the ignition key to specific places, press the brake a set number of times, and some other combos. Here’s an example. https://youtu.be/0Mbu_YDHGqc https://youtu.be/0Mbu_YDHGqc
- Arrath 4y ago
  I call these "car cheat codes". Even modern vehicles often have some of these, hiding options (like turning off the "BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELT!!!" alarm) that the manufacturer may not want readily available. They can be kind of fun to enter correctly.
  - wil421 4y ago
    That reminds me I removed the seat belt chime in my last Grand Cherokee because I had a big dog sitting in the back.
pmontra 4y ago
Apparently FIAT had many few times less key barrels for their Uno model in the 80s. I remember a story about a car that used to be parked in a street. It was along the lines of - Son, did you drove the Uno today? - I did. - And you filled up the tank, thanks! - Nope, I didn't, no money for that. - So, who did it? - Mmm, was my bag in the car? - Nope. - Oops!

danbruc 4y ago

How can you not notice that you are in the wrong car? Different people have different stuff lying around in their cars. Stickers, scratches, dents, dirt. Cars smell differently.

skhr0680 4y ago
Drunk
vikingerik 4y ago
If it's late and dark, you're tired and not noticing things, and both cars are mostly clean inside, it would be quite possible to make that mistake.
- danbruc 4y ago
  And the same seat and correct mirror positions? Sure, it is not impossible, but I have a hard time imagining that one would not notice driving away in the wrong car.
Hamuko 4y ago
I definitely don't have a lot of stuff lying around in my cabin. At the moment the only things visible in the cabinet are an electronic parking disc and a 12V two-port USB charger. If I encountered a clean car with the same interior colours as mine, I might not immediately notice it.
brewtide 4y ago
Long ago I was tasked with swapping someone's Porsche off to them at their house, as the service writer the evening before had given the customer the wrong car. Both black. One a panamera (so?) 4, one a 4s. One with dealer plates (the one they ended up taking home..) , one with a custom plate. So, after showing up to this persons house (through a golf course, up a winding top of the hill driveway), I knocked on his door and asked him the same question (after apologizing for the workers mistake). "Oh, well, it was evening and the radio stations were programmed in the same, so I just didn't even think about it. In the morning I said "well, that's strange, usually they wash the car nicely before returning it -- then I realized it wasn't my car". Guy was super down to earth about it, not a care at all and the exchange was very pleasant. Point being: some people just really go with the flow, and even with 100k+ cars 20 years ago, sometimes just don't really pay attention to, well, much of anything. Bigger fish to fry, I guess. I'll never forget the whole interaction, fully expecting a grumpy person and coming face to face with "eh, life!".

ARandomerDude 4y ago

> “After five, 10 minutes I got a text on my phone that said ‘Rajesh are you driving [a] Tesla,’” he explained to the outlet. Randev went on to say the person who messaged him told him he was driving the wrong car. > all he’s gotten from the automaker is radio silence So...where did the text come from? No indication that the police were involved in the article. How did the other Tesla owner get his cell number? This story seems implausible to me.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Rhedox 4y ago
> When the two Tesla owners met up, the rightful owner of the car Randev was driving told him he’d found Randev’s phone number on a document inside Randev’s car. That means, if you’re following along, the other guy was able to gain access to Randev’s Tesla as well. Wild.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  That makes it even less plausible! Teslas have been around for years. If people could unlock each others cars we’d have heard about it a long time ago.
  - croes 4y ago
    Maybe you need specific circumstances to make it happen
joevandyk 4y ago
The article states: > When the two Tesla owners met up, the rightful owner of the car Randev was driving told him he’d found Randev’s phone number on a document inside Randev’s car.
mh8h 4y ago
From the original story on Global: > Randev said the other Tesla driver told him he was able to get his number because he had printed out a document, which was in his car and it had his phone number on it.

zamadatix 4y ago

This is the kind of thing where the lack of a traditional PR presence hurts Tesla. I'd like to say the story sounds unlikely but at the same time there is nothing about it that says impossible. If they aren't going to respond with what looks to have happened from their system's point of view then it's hard to give them unilateral benefit of the doubt whenever these kinds of stories come out. Some problems are real, others aren't, and it's not feasible to say which this is right now.