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Tesla Will Open Its Security Code To Other Car Manufacturers (engadget.com)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced he would share the source code for Tesla's car security software with other manufacturers, adding that it would be "extremely important" to ensure the safety of future self-driving cars. Engadget reports: Musk didn't provide a timeline for availability, and you might not want to get your hopes up when it took years for Tesla just to post any source code. And this isn't strictly a selfless gesture. If rival brands adopt Tesla's approach, it could set an unofficial standard for connected car security that would look good from a marketing standpoint. The code could provide a boost to connected car security if and when it arrives. There are few common frameworks (technical or legal) for safeguarding networked vehicles, and security might not always be a top priority. This could give companies a baseline level of security that would save brands the trouble of developing an effective defense from scratch.
I can't see many if any other automakers taking in code Tesla has produced, pretty sure most would prefer to go their own way... I am also pretty dubious if they did, that it would provide much marketing benefit to Tesla.
Even from a pure technical standpoint I wonder how much use you could get from what Tesla is offering when each company would have pretty different approaches to self driving cars.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Toyota has hundreds of security engineers and produces about 9 million cars per year. That's about 11% of total auto production.
Tesla produces about 100,000 vehicles, or 1% of what Toyota produces. It's going to be tough for a tiny boutique operation to even *influence* the standards uses by the auto industry, much less *set* the standards. It's like me and my company trying to set the standard for HTTP authentication. Our comments were read by some of the significant players who have some actual say in what standards are adopted, but organizations such as Netscape, Microsoft, and Apache designed and selected the standards.
A more realistic goal for Tesla might be to have a voice so that standards adopted by the industry don't completely screw them. Since Tesla is 0.11% of the auto industry, statistical noise, the industry as a whole doesn't care what they do. VW, which produces a hundred times as many vehicles, actually affects the industry.
It's an Elon Musk tweet. He promises all kinds of shit that never happens. 100% solar powered superchargers, self driving cars in 2017, built in dashcams... The list is quite extensive.
It's not news.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Toyota has hundreds of security engineers and produces about 9 million cars per year.
Security concerns around self driving cars are many orders of magnitude more critical than anything traditional auto makers have to deal with.
What is the most complex thing todays auto makers have to worry about? Pretty much it's wired input for gas and brake, that's about it... oh maybe something as important as On-Star's ability to stop a car running.
All of that stuff is nothing compared to a self-driving car that is not just directing speed but also direction.
I wrote elsewhere I'm not sure what Tesla has to offer will be taken in by other auto makers and probably wouldn't be of use to them. However I do think Tesla is vastly ahead of other car makers in terms of practical self-driving car software, both because the not-quite-self-driving car Autopilot feature has been in production for some time, and because of the vast quantity of sensor data Tesla has around to process and try new systems against.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To be fair, a few slashdotters with a month of time and existing FOSS tech could probably create a more secure car than the industry as a whole.
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Don't forget a $35,000 model 3!
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Yes OnStar cars have been similarly hacked, despite GM producing many millions of cars....
I'm not saying Tesla's security is perfect either, I am saying:
A) How much more important security is with a self-driving car where a hacker could literally drive a car, and
B) Tesla has had a much longer time with cars in production to think about this.
It's worth noting that the hack YOU linked to involved going in through the web browser that was actually IN THE CAR ITSELF. So you'd have to direct someone to visit a web site using the in-car browser.
The OnStar hacks have been purely remote, initialed from afar. And the hack you linked to did not affect the self-driving features, just the brakes.
Tesla is clearly being very careful and doing something right when they deliver car updates over the air and yet have not had any serious real-world exploits.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The trolls are at it hardcore lately, huh?
Good job to Tesla for announcing that they're planning on open sourcing their code! This can't be anything but good news for the auto industry. There's a lot of people that are worried about their autonomous cars getting hacked, this will provide a good baseline of security.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Well, they have logged over 5 million miles of fully autonomous driving on public roads. Oh wait, that's Waymo.
> the vast quantity of sensor data Tesla has around to process and try new systems against.
You're kidding about that last part, right? BMW, and several other auto companies, get more sensor data in a week than Tesla does in a year, simply because they've produced and sold millions of vehicles with driver assist. Tesla does have a few advantages, such as a very charismatic CEO. There huge weakness is when you talk. About a "vast quantity" of - anything. Just using BMW as one example, millions of BMW cars are on the road with systems including Active Lane Keeping Assistant, Frontal Collision Warning with City Collision Mitigation, and Active Cruise Control with Stop & Go. Being a small, boutique player has its advantages, but the only thing vast about Tesla is its CEOs imagination and ego.
Well, they have logged over 5 million miles of fully autonomous driving on public roads. Oh wait, that's Waymo.
Is Waymo Toyota? Or any other traditional car maker?
OH! Thanks for re-enforcing my point. I didn't say Tesla was the ONLY one ahead of the large car makers... I just said the car makers producing millions of cars now are way behind.
BMW, and several other auto companies, get more sensor data in a week
That is utter nonsense, you appear to be equating extremely primitive sensors like sonic devices and lane recognizers to a full 360 multi-camera camera rig or LIDAR (Tesla doesn't use LIDAR but Waymo does). Come on man. Sensor data from sensors that are not going to be the ones eventually used for self driving tech is vastly less valuable than data that is from the actual hardware that will be running the system.
There is a world of difference between lane assist (which incidentally can often go wrong, have you been in a car that has this???) and a car truly steering itself.
This also brings up another point, it doesn't matter how many millions of BMW cars have Lane Assist on when they have no way to get data back to BWM. All of that data is lost, of no use to BMW in development. Tesla has the ability to retrieve a lot of data off car hard drives during service or even to stream key factors back on the fly in a way almost all of the many millions of cars other car makers produce, cannot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps so. There are a few of us who understand security. There are many on Slashdot who think they do, and steadfastly refuse to pay any attention to those of us who have been doing security as a lifelong career.
Not knowing is okay - smart people can learn. Refusing to learn because you think you know it all ensures failure.
In a few years, TSLA will have a mult-trillion dollar market cap, bigger than all the other car and energy companies combined. Do you even land a rocket on a boat, bro?
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So they're emulating BYD, the largest maker of electric cars?
No, they have no intention of building cheap pieces of tin that no American would buy.
BYD actually mass produces electric cars,
that Americans wouldn't buy. So what? It doesn't matter if they make a billion cars a year if they're unsalable in the USA, still the biggest automotive market on the planet.
Americans are excited about Teslas, so every automaker is trying to make vehicles more like Teslas. Not BYDs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No short here! I'm smart enough to not short such a volatile stock with a crazed CEO at the helm who engages in stock manipulation. Curious about when a $35K Tesla will finally ship, though...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Curious about when a $35K Tesla will finally ship, though...
When Tesla stops selling more expensive models as rapidly as they can produce them, of course. It's a business, not just a game. And they're collecting $10k in profit from each sale right now, they aren't going to give that up any sooner than necessary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't care about their source code, what I would like is the protocol between vehicles to be open and documented.
Curious about when a $35K Tesla will finally ship, though...
And they're collecting $10k in profit from each sale right now, they aren't going to give that up any sooner than necessary.
Huh, I guess, based upon their loss of $717 million last quarter, Tesla deconstructed and removed from sale about 71,000 vehicles!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!