Posted on

Hacking the Tesla … or any car?

Screenshot_4_5_14_9_08_AM

So apparently and not surprisingly the Tesla has a computer network running inside … Dragtimes reports how a user noticed what they believed to be an ethernet jack and decided to connect their computer for a port scan.

Some tech savvy Model S owners have located a 4 pin connector (HSD 4 pole M12) on the left side of the Tesla Model S dashboard that turns out to be a disguised ethernet networking port.  After taking apart one end of an ethernet patch cable and trying different pin combinations to connect with the Tesla’s port, a networking connection was established between the Model S and a laptop computer.  This connection allowed for port scanning and data sniffing to explore  how the Tesla Model S systems communicate with each other and what services are running and used.

The car’s internal 100 Mbps, full duplex ethernet network consists of 3 devices with assiged IP addresses in the 192.168.90.0 subnet, the center console, dashboard/nav screen and one more unknown device.  via DragTimes.com.

This raises an interesting question … would you hack or jailbreak your car?  Unlike the typical computer a car has a pretty large set of safety responsibilities and I personally think it’s a bad idea.  Trying to get a custom app on there outside of provided and approved platform could lead to trouble.  It doesn’t seem worth the risk …

Posted on

You have 10 minutes to get the F— out!

Location based services are something that’s been hyped for a years now. While everyone has heard of the coupon from Starbucks example, how about a real world practical use case?  The emergency system in Israel is the first time I’ve heard of anything like this and sounds very impressive.

The 10 minute warning system that Israel has been using to notify civilians in the vicinity of structures they will be bombing is fascinating. I could not find an online description of the system but the way it works is that civilian neighbors of a structure that will be attacked are given a 10 minute warning by phone to evacuate the area. It appears to be fairly precise given the counterproductive nature of giving evacuation warnings across too broad of an area.

Think for a second about what it would take to make such a system effective. First and foremost, they would have to have a map of every structure in Gaza, which is clearly something Google does on a daily basis, but then they would have to have a database of phone numbers attached to every person in each structure (remember this is predominately a mobile based telecom system). [Venture Chronicles]