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White Hat Hacks Tesla Firmware, Uncovers Plans for a New Car Model

Tesla is preparing a Model S P100D model

Mar 8, 2016 22:50 GMT  ·  By
Tesla P85D racing a Tesla P90D model
   Tesla P85D racing a Tesla P90D model

Jason Hughes, a Tesla owner from Hickory, North Carolina, has just foiled Tesla's secret plans for an upcoming car model after he hacked his own vehicle and took a closer look at its firmware.

Describing himself as a white hat hacker, Mr. Hughes was inspecting the most recent firmware updates his Tesla Model S P85D model received during the previous days.

White hat hacker finds logo of upcoming Tesla Model S P100D

Inside the car's firmware update version 2.13.77, Mr. Hughes found a PNG image that depicted the logotype of a car model that Tesla doesn't yet sell, the P100D.

Currently, Tesla provides the P70D, the P85D, and P90D models, which come with 70KWh, 85kWh, and 90kWh batteries.

The logotype Mr. Hughes found inside the most recent firmware image means the company is preparing the car's source code for an upcoming model, one that features a 100kWh battery, and the image that Mr. Hughes found might be used in various sections of the vehicle's on-board digital display.

But instead of selling the tip to a car magazine, Mr. Hughes encrypted the P100D text with the SHA256 algorithm and tweeted to Elon Musk saying "I know your secret" along with the SHA-encoded text. He also posted the same SHA-encoded text on a Tesla forum that he regularly visits.

It didn't take long for other hackers to catch on what the message was saying, and the tweet went viral, exposing Tesla's little secret.

Tesla tried to downgrade the hackers' car

The following day, Mr. Hughes says that Tesla engineers forced his car to downgrade to an older firmware version, 2.12.45. Since Mr. Musk is known for having a temper when someone criticizes his Tesla cars, most people thought the company's founder was behind the move.

Musk replied via Twitter saying that he didn't order the downgrade and congratulated Hughes by saying that "good hacking is a gift."

Unfortunately for Tesla, Hughes, like any other experienced hacker, knows to back up his firmware before tinkering with its code, so he was able to restore his car's firmware later on.