L4sBotResearchers jailbreak a Tesla to get free in-car feature upgrades
AutoTL;DRThis 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. That’s science we can get behind!
redditReallySucksGood bot
Heated rear seats I can get behind
JaymesRSWhy would you want to be behind the heated seats? Seems like it’d be warmer on the seat, not to mention that there’s no 3rd row in a Tesla so you’d be in the trunk…
Oh, you!
Well it was a pun.
Get behind
The future sucks.
Gogo SempaiHardware companies trying to copy the software companies with a subscription model really sucks. What’s next? Intel charging a monthly fee to unlock 5 GHz boost? Nvidia charging a monthly fee if you want to do anything AI-related? Samsung and LG charging a monthly fee if you want to use a TV or a monitor for more than 2 hours a day? Greed knows no bounds.
FireWire400Funnily enough, Intel tried something similar already in 2010 (way before their pay-as-you-go bullshit). It was a Pentium that you could unlock hyper-threading on for $50.
Pretty sure intel do something like that with their server CPUs.
ZeroHoraYep: Intel on Demand
Don’t give them ideas!
That model is here already for cloud computing, literally dollars for CPU cores and bandwidth and memory. But that works out well for renting other people’s servers and would be bad for any product that you purchase outright. I suggest we all not buy those products if they do that.
Is that not what the K versions of their processors are? Pay more for the ability to overclock and get good speeds
Amd did that back in the day. All the chips were the same but locked out. You could scrape and use a pencil to draw in a jumper and make your chip the flagship one.
This isn’t unusual for Enterprise grade IT hardware. Mainframes have been sold/licensed that way for decades. I recently dealt with a performance issue that we solved by buying a license to use more of a piece of hardware that was already in our data center (we didn’t realize the piece we owned had twice the capacity that could be unlocked just through licensing till we engaged the vendor)
TrickDacyI hope no execs are reading this thread because if they had these ideas they’d have no qualms about implementing them
The future involves piracy.
How about open rebellion? Reject Capitalism. Riot.
What is an alternative to capitalism?
That’s a massive question for someone to answer in a lemmy comment. There may be a variety of alternative systems that can work. Trade and society are forms of technology that we’ve halted progress on by locking ourselves into archaic systems of governance.
Just give people that reply a little latitude and understand no one person can fully describe a full system that took thousands of years of civilization could be replaced.
I think these questions are similar to the “I think we should fix society somewhat…” meme. Someone criticizing a thing is somehow expected to know and parrot a complete, flawless fix for the thing they’re criticizing.
How is that their responsibility at all? It isn’t, and even if they did have a perfectly good answer, they’re usually utterly powerless to implement it.
It’s pretty normal for people. Anti-auth positions are terrifying to many. How will I feed my dogs if there’s no Purina? Forest for the trees and all that. What fucks me up is I come from an ethical position, so I don’t actually care how we solve problems so long as it’s voluntary.
You tell me. I don’t need to have an answer just like I don’t need to be a pilot to know a plane crashed in my backyard.
I agree that unregulated capitalism has its flaws but I personally don’t think that capitalism itself (if properly regulated) is inherently bad.
Capitalism is inherently bad because every dollar of profit is a dollar exploited from the supplier, producer, worker, and customer all to benefit the owner who only got to their position by having exploited enough people and sequestered enough resources through this hellish ouroborus.
The definition they use for capitalism is different from how it’s commonly used. They focus on the incestuous relationships between capital and government while a more common use includes each individual’s ideas about what interference is necessary.
Just trying to make sure nobody’s talking past each other.
You’re right. It’s always wise to break a system without having a plan of what to do once it’s broken.
Why would you disingenuously assume break the system instead of fix the system?
I am sure Anarchy will lead us to a humanitarian utopia. Definitely not to an even worse form of capitalism. No, sir.
I don’t think it’s actually possible that actual anarchy would lead to more advanced capitalism immediately superceding it.
Today’s capitalism is only possible through the large amount of complexity our system can manage. A collapse is sometimes defined as a rapid simplification of a society…in a collapse scenario…I don’t think we’d be able to have three different payment mechanisms for one card, or software as a service models. If the instability of the US causes it to go to anarchy, nobody will give a shit about evil corp’s business model and its corresponding license agreement. If they need to break it to eat, they will. They’ll break it so often that it might as well not exist.
Humanity got into the air without a plan for airports or fuel consumption. Most of the time, doing the thing is more important than planning for its consequences.
wizardbeardCounterpoint: Current ML/AI trends and the attempts to claw back digital privacy after tech outpaced the rules that could be made for responsible use.
“you wouldn’t download an in-car feature”
It would be my pleasure.
I’d do it even if I didn’t want the feature.
RedjardYou are stealing that feature. Because of you some innocent tesla owner will have their in-car features taken away by the piracy enforcement team.
So they did pretty much this
https://youtu.be/vXe8pe18MNk
Power LED Attack - Computerphile
JarmerI’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?
IronEagleBirdUnless you pay them more every month. Not everything needs to be a subscription and they’ll keep doing it unless people stop buying.
Flying SquidSame reason it’s legal for HP to brick your printer if you use third party ink. You violated their shitty TOS that none of us read because it’s 80 pages of legalese, but you agreed to it.
hmmm yes I suppose that’s true. Okay so let me rephrase: I’m amazed it’s legal for a car manufacturer to even HAVE a TOS like that when you purchase a car. It shouldn’t be legal to write language like “you are purchasing this but agreeing that you can’t use it” … wtf?
I agree that it’s wrong, but I don’t think, at least in the U.S., that there’s any law against it. Like I said, HP does the exact same thing with their printers. I certainly would like for it to be illegal.
StreetdogCan any fill in how this is in the EU right now, as they often have better legislation regarding this issue?
In Germany, BMW and VW both offer subscriptions for functionality already built into the car. BMW is notorious for their heated seat subscription here and the Mk8 Golf I leased for a while had a bunch of minor stuff pay-walled like automatic high beams, changing color of the interior ambient lighting, etc.
You can still outright buy those features but it’s totally insane to pay for something that’s already physically inside the car. And it’s not like these are budget brands that need to upsell a bunch of stuff to be profitable. A base Golf starts at €31k…
As for Tesla, at least where I am in the EU, there is only one feature offered as a subscription: a mobile network connection for the car. Keeping its SIM card active basically. That one makes sense, I’d say.
Then there are three “features” that you can buy outright after the fact: an “acceleration boost”, that one is dodgy, and two levels of their auto-pilot/self-driving. The latter two currently do effectively nothing (especially in Europe that is also true for enhanced autopilot), so they are more or less an option to say “here have some money for future development” if you have too much…
No heating subscription or anything like that. I was going to say that I think the local laws seem to have at least discouraged them a bit, but BMW and VW are trying it too, so I don’t know.
So I’ve been in discussions like this for equipment on trains. It functionally goes:
You paid for X. The hardware we plan to use for faster build supports X+Y. You can either:
I actually agree with the options prevented above. I just think that, as the owner, you should still have the right to reverse item 2 if you can figure out how.
Don’t like it? Don’t buy it. Simple.
“Don’t like it? Move”
That’s the same dangerous logic. Heaven forbid people try to make things better.
First they enshittified Tesla and I didn’t care cuz I didn’t buy Tesla
Then they enshittified GM and I didn’t care cuz I didn’t like GM
Then they enshittified Toyota and I didn’t care cuz I didn’t buy Toyota
…
Lobbying.
I really wonder if there’s a way to use LLMs just to point out every concerning thing in a EULA/TOS
sudoTo what end? Probably every eula/tos you click through has concerning shit that is against your best interest. Either you use the product or you don’t.
Yeah but I want to know just how fucked I am when I sign it
TLDR If you’re the consumer, you’re always the fucked party of a TOS.
That’s why EULAs or other contracts are not necessarily legally binding if they contain specific parts that could be considered “unfair”; at least in the European Union.
You can give this a try
Bet you could but not sure what that would get you. So you don’t click agree to it. Now what?