As if Tesla didn’t have enough to worry about surrounding their CEO or the amount of executive level employees that jumped ship this year, now cyber security experts indicate that Tesla’s key fobs can be hacked in just seconds, allowing hackers to easily break into the cars and drive away without a trace. Tough break for the highly anticipated Tesla Model 3 that is hitting the streets at rapid pace.
The team of researchers at the COSIC group displayed the ease of cloning the key fob by sending an encrypted code to a car’s radios to trigger it to unlock the doors, enabling the car to start. According to the report, the researchers made a 6-terabyte table of all possible keys for any combination of code pairs, and then used a Yard Stick One radio, a Proxmark radio, and a Raspberry Pi mini-computer, which cost about $600 total—not bad for a Tesla Model 3 though—to capture the required two codes. With these tools, the researchers were able to calculate the exact crypto codes to unlock any key fab and start any Tesla 3 in 1.6 seconds!
Evolve MGA offers cyber insurance that covers policyholders in the event their cloud data is hacked, lost, or stolen. Get appointed with our cyber insurance specialists for a FREE Quote!
If you’d like to read more about the electric car manufacturer vulnerability, click here.