Comment on Teslas Can Be Stolen by Hijacking WiFi at Charging Stations, Researchers Find
RealFknNito@lemmy.world 9 months agoProprietary software is often locked down to be idiot proof and tamper proof to the average consumer. Actually disabling the wifi (not just turning off SSID broadcasting) or other exploitable points might require a deeper level of access than just the settings page.
And it’s not websites people are concerned about. There’s a pretty common hacking concept where you attack the weakest connected device. If your car connects to your garage door opener, your coffee maker, your washing machine, all your smart devices - they only need to get access to one to get access to all of them since those devices are ‘trusted’. Your car doesn’t know why your coffee maker says ‘unlock’ but it’s gonna listen, it trusts your coffee machine.
Clent@lemmy.world 9 months ago
No. That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this work.
A car does not automatically accept commands to devices it connects to because of some inherent trust. The car would be programmed to only accept commands from devices it expects to send it such commands.
Anyone who allows the toaster to not only command the car but alap unlock the car should be fired and blackballed from the industry. That’s not a whoopsie, learning experience. That’s an unforgivable level of incompetence.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 9 months ago
The kind of mistake someone on a work visa working 85 hours a week and sleeping in the office so they don’t get fired might make you say?
Clent@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Interesting that the Lemmy hive mind wants this to be true, yet another indication that this place does not have a strong technical knowledge base. But no, this wouldn’t be the decision of a single person. That isn’t what this exploit is but again, trying to explain things to people who don’t understand the technical side of things isn’t a winning battle.
RealFknNito@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I simplified the concept which might seem misleading to you but the outcome is exactly the same.
You can get access to the home network through weakly secured devices. If you can get past a weak device, trusted by the network, you can send commands through the network and to other devices as if you were a typical user. If your car can be unlocked from your computer, a hacker would only need to get past your coffee maker on that same network to be able to tell your car to unlock.
In other words, the Internet of Things can often be a liability if you don’t know how to secure points of access to your network. If you installed a smart thermostat and it’s still broadcasting the default SSID, that’s a glowing weakspot for a hacker. Who would need WPA2 security for that, right?
Grippler@feddit.dk 9 months ago
In the case of tesla, you’d still need the API token to the specific car to send any commands to it. It doesn’t actually take commands directly, from anything, it’s all done through teslas servers via the API. Getting access to local network makes no difference. You can’t even send commands via BT to the car.