Hacking continues to be a major concern for automakers, with two researchers recently managing to take control of a Tesla Model S sedan through its entertainment system.
Security researchers Kevin Mahaffey and Marc Rogers, who hacked the electric vehicle over the course of a year, were able to pull the car to an immediate stop by applying the emergency hand brake while it was idling at less than five miles per hour, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Mahaffey, co-founder and CTO of mobile security firm Lookout, said in a blog post that the car's engine would "gracefully" shut off when it reached higher speeds, which helped the duo keep control over steering and braking.
"We shut the car down when it was driving initially at a low speed of five miles per hour," the researchers said, RoadandTrack.com reported. "All the screens go black, the music turns off and the handbrake comes on, lurching it to a stop."
The hack follows two weeks after security researchers managed to disable a new Jeep Cherokee through its infotainment system. This resulted in Fiat Chrysler recalling 1.4 million vehicles.
Mahaffey and Rogers, principle security researcher four CloudFare, needed physical access to pull off the hack, having to plug a laptop into the Model S dashboard, according to Wired. After getting a connection, they started to use laptop commands to start and drive the car and managed to plant a remote-access Trojan into the car's software, which let them remotely cut its motor later on.
Other tricks the team pulled off include remotely locking and unlocking the car, controlling the radio and touchscreen displays, and opening and closing the trunk.
A total of six vulnerabilities were found in the Model S's software, but the duo said they were found after they had physical access, The LA Times reported. A Tesla spokeswoman said the company has created a fix for these issues and sent it out to all Model S cars through an over-the-air software update on Wednesday.
Mahaffey praised the software update, but he added that Tesla needed to improve individual system security since he and Rogers were able to take control of the entertainment system by hacking into each system individually.
"Overall, I feel more secure driving in a Tesla Model S than any other connected car on the road," he wrote in the post.
Mahaffey and Rogers will present their findings at the Def Con hacker conference on Friday in Las Vegas.
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