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Tesla Model S Has Hidden Ethernet Port, User Runs Firefox On the 17" Screen
New submitter FikseGTS (3604833) writes "A Tesla Model S owner located a 4 pin connector on the left side of the Tesla Model S dashboard that turns out to be a disguised ethernet networking port. After crafting his owns patch cable to connect with the Tesla's port, a networking connection was established between the Tesla Model S and a laptop computer. The Model S is running a 100 Mbps, full duplex ethernet network and 3 devices were found with assigned IP addresses in the 192.168.90.0 subnet. Some ports and services that were open on the devices were 22 (SSH), 23 (telnet),53 (open domain), 80 (HTTP), 111 (rpcbind), 2049 (NFS), 6000 (X11). Port 80 was serving up a web page with the image or media of the current song being played. The operating system is modified version of Ubuntu using an ext3 filesystem. Using X11 it also appears that someone was able to somewhat run Firefox on both of the Model S screens. Is a jailbroken Tesla Model S on the way?"
Some more details on this front would be appreciated, for anyone who has a Tesla they'd like to explore.
I would feel safer on the road with CentOS. :P
The Teslas will be the front-line soldiers when skynet finally awakes and claims its birth-right.
Or parked
I think touch screens are kind of dangerous in a car. I know what my dials and buttons do and can control them by feel while watching the road. touch screens not so much
Now we can have idiots screwing around with the onboard computer and kill themselves because they did something they shouldn't have.
If you want to jailbreak your phone/tablet/television/refrigerator/etc., power to you. If you do anything that impairs reliability, the worst case is that you can't make a phone call, or your ice-cream melts. You're not having any impact on other people.
If you jailbreak your car, however, and inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road. Everything (including braking) in Tesla cars is tied into the software, and this is not something you should mess around with.
For the love of God, if you're going to hack while driving, at least get yourself a safety device.
Stop fucking with shit while you are supposed to be driving...
iirc, that had a ton of user submitted photos and they were funny as hell. looks like amazon took the user photos down. too bad, it really gave context to the 'reviews' on that product.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I assume they made all their sources available to Tesla owners, right?
You know, it could be that Tesla enlists the help of elite hackers who have compromised other high-flying products to harden their systems before somebody gets killed?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
That connector seems to be a M12 standard industrial ethernet connector (IEC 61067–2–101 Amendment 1)
It would be nice to know if there is some sort of window manager running there. If so, it might be possible to add hosts to this network running their own X clients.
Have gnu, will travel.
....some moron "jailbreaks" the car....messes something up, and causes the car to crash/explode/something....
And a nice lawsuit blaming Tesla.
The idea you would jailbreak it assumes the system is actually heavily secured like an iPhone. Maybe it's just an Ubuntu system with no special security in place, and it's just a matter of booting it from an external drive or something similar.
Anyway, it would be kind of odd trying to stop you tinkering with it, as if you could tell users not to adjust their valve timing or not to pull their differential apart.
Can I mime Bitcoins with it?
The specs for all recent switches I've seen will let you connect with a crossover cable as if it's a normal cable. However I don't think it's always the other way where a PC to PC connection will use a normal cable as a link and treat it like old machines connected via a crossover cable.
It's just the equivalent of messing with the car stereo on other cars.
Seriously you guys.
Everyone knows that if you do not have physical security, you do not have security. Leaving a port just dangling there for anyone to connect to is just fucking stupid. Having everything in the car communicate on an unencrypted network is even more stupid.
Sounds like a very slow way to charge your sportscar when all you have is a Cat5 cable. :)
We should also note that apparently Tesla engineers detected this hacking or exploring and sent a nastygram to the cars owner, “Tesla USA engineers have seen a tentative of hacking on my car.”, “can be related to industrial espionage and advised me to stop investigation, to not void the warranty”.
That's worrying if the car phones home to alert engineer that you're dinkin around in the car's network. Wonder what other information the car is sending to Tesla's corporate headquarters?
The craziest thing in the article that I saw was that Tesla contacted him to tell him he couldn't do that on his car, or it'd void his warranty. Not only is he not allowed to reverse engineer how his car works, they're apparently watching his car at all times.
It won't be long before people will know what we do, 24/7.
-=Lothsahn=-
That's so gay.
There is no excuse whatsoever for having telnetd running since you already have sshd. Telnet is a laughable security hole.
Lets be honest, Ubuntu is a bloated beast, even if its modified.
Considering the Telsa cars run on batteries and that any optimization would be a huge benefit. Would it not be in their best interest to use a highly optimized Debian, or even slackware, over a bloated Ubuntu?
Consider this system is always running when the car is offline, and with the recent "vampire" energy drain. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to work out the current operating system could be replaced and/or improved.
Big oversight in my eyes, and a lazy one at that from Tesla. Forefront of technology? Nope.
am I going to get to play Doom on it?
Why don't you get the proper connector for your "secret" jack rather than nigger-rigging your DIY cable to a $100K car?
You'd look pretty silly melting the battery pack on your $100k car because you thought it'd be fun to put it on your network, and then it somehow got attacked. Oh, what's this /dev/bat? I think I'll see what happens when I try to play MP3s through that...
While I havent seen marked cable in years I got plenty batches where the switches report crossed wires on half of the batch. Doesn't really matter, but it is kind of strange as it is that if you plug in 4 lines into a server that a random amount shows up as cross-over.
No! Don't hack it! That's where KITT lives!!
Car stereos don't control braking.
There's a lot of GPL software in Ubuntu, starting with the Linux kernel. Does Tesla distribute the source code to Model S owners that ask?
So, the third, unidentified contraption is a GSM, would be my guess.
And Tesla stating hacking the system could be "industrial espionage"? I'd think the fact that Ubuntu is published under GPL kinda rules that one out.
In fact, I want to see the source code so I can build this interface thingamajig into my own car.
Did you actually read the issue?
if an application's logging, regardless of level, renders your system unusable, your log daemon settings are jacked up.
The problem isn't the application switching on debug logging at the same time something else does.
Neither does the system that is being messed with, which I why I made the analogy in the first place!
Hmm April 1st has a long tail this year...
Next year I'm not going to believe anything until the middle of May.
... a Beowulf cluster of these ...
The connector is an M12 Industrial Ethernet Connector - as seen at http://www.designworldonline.c... The story description should be updated so that more readers find out that they can connect to their Tesla's on-board computer via a easy to find cable.
Interesting. I noticed just the other day than, when I dimmed the dash light intensity on my rental that the speedometer disappeared. So it appears that lots of cars "violate federal law." So I looked up the standards (not laws) you cited and couldn't find the reference to "at all times."
So, I see two scenarios are possible:
A. It appears this is a chronic problem across the industry and none of the engineers, regulators, or lawyers has caught it until slashdot anonymous coward saved the world with his post.
B. This particular AC is a egotistical blowhard who wants to sound authoritative.
Let me think for a moment... which is the more likely scenario?
You think a man-in-the-middle attack is particularly likely when I'm plugging my laptop into my Tesla in my driveway?
Finally, we have Dice-era Slashdot-worthy news story.
"I set CONFIG_MAX_WATTS=5000 and rebuilt the kernel... Now my windows vibrate when I put on Metallica!"
"I set CONFIG_MP3_PLAYBACK_MULT=1.2 and I find myself driving faster to keep up with the music. I got 3 speeding tickets last week."
How can they sell a product in the US that has the Ubuntu "restricted extras" enabled? Could Dell sell an Ubuntu computer with the restricted repo enabled, or would you have to enable it yourself?
Great information is here, please keep it up. Mobile Phone Solutions
I assume they made all their sources available to Tesla owners, right? http://sistemavenusopiniones.o...
That gal is attractive too. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You're overreacting. He is allowed to reverse engineer how his car works, it just means he will void the warranty. It's "non intended use", they're not going to hang him for that. If you break the seal on your car's engine and use it to drive a blender and then bring it back because it doesn't run anymore, you're not going to get much sympathy either.
As for how they found out, TFA doesn't specify, just speculate, but I'm sceptical about the espionage angle. "Don't attribute to malice ..." yada yada. I put a tenner on "He posted the pictures on the Tesla facebook page" and a fiver on "He broke something and brought it in for repairs". No money on the "Tesla is Big Brother" angle from me.
Jail breaking automobile software, yer, there's a recipe for disaster!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
In regard to probing ethernet wire combinations
Since Ethernet has two (in 100baseT) transformers, there's a possibility that one bridges two POE
(power over Ethernet) poles with a receiver transformer. Compliant POE sources, though, shut
down if there's a short, so it shouldn't harm anything.
If the experimenter used a simple voltmeter, he could see power presence, and (if he also tested
the resistance) would know which wires went together in pairs. Then, there's two polarities in
each pair, and swapping pairs, so that's eight possibilities. Without probing, there'd be 4*3*2 = 12
possibilities.
How can they possibly comply with all the licenses if they ship with something like Ubuntu? It is their responsibility (not Canonical's) to comply with the licenses, which means shipping source code for GPLv2 software (download link is not sufficient), among a gazillion other license requirements. Did customers get some physical media or "the offer" (https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html) with their keys?