Technology
Urgent warning for Tesla users as teen claims to have hacked 25 cars and can ‘control them’ from home
A TEEN hacker is claiming to have hacked 25 Tesla vehicles and says he can control them from his home.
The ‘hacked’ cars are said to be all over the world and the 19-year-old thinks he can control various functions on them.
AFPThe teen hacker says he can control some features on the Tesla cars[/caption]
The German teen is called David Colombo and his Twitter bio says he’s a “IT Security Specialist & Hacker”.
Colombo says he’s told Tesla’s security team about they are investigating.
We have also reached out to Tesla for comment.
The hacker says he could access 25 Tesla cars in 13 different countries.
He tweeted on January 10: “So, I now have full remote control of over 20 Tesla’s in 10 countries and there seems to be no way to find the owners and report it to them…”
Silicon Republic then reported that the teen had actually manage to hack even more Tesla vehicles.
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The 19-year-old says the list of what he can control on the vehicles is “pretty long”.
He claims he can do things like emotely disable the sentry mode protection on these cars.
He also said he could open windows and doors, start keyless driving, turn the lights on and control the music.
He tweeted: “I think it’s pretty dangerous if someone is able to remotely blast music on full volume or open the windows/doors while you are on the highway.
“Even flashing the lights non-stop can potentially have some (dangerous) impact on other drivers.”
The hacker isn’t blaming Tesla’s infrastructure for the flaw though.
He said it’s to do with the owners of the cars.
He says he’ll release more specific details once the flaw has been fixed and it can’t be exploited by anyone else.
Lots of security researchers look for flaws in Tesla platforms because the company pays them up to $15,000 if they spot a significant issue that needs to be addressed.
Tesla runs its bug bounty programme through BugCrowd.
In other news, a rugby ball shaped planet has been spotted outside our Solar System and scientists are calling it deformed.
Nasa thinks the James Webb Space Telescope will likely be hit by space debris.
Donald Trump looks set to launch his Truth Social app next month.
