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Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

electrek.co

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Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#161

Post by Kirby64 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #94
grecy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this as a thought experiment lately. Let's say there's two versions of the car. Higher spec has heated seats, lower spec doesn't. Let's say it's a $1000 price difference. At what point below are you ticked off ? Level 1: The higher spec car has the physical seat heaters, all the wiring, all the plugs and all the software. The lower spec car has none of that. (I think this is how cars have alw…

Level 6: The lower spec car has the physical seat heater, all the wiring, all plugged in, all the software, and a setting added (for extra production cost) that makes it not work and can't be changed by the car owner. We are talking about this one. The entire thread is about this one, and none of your options even passed through the conversation.

This is identical to 5, in my view. Its not licensed. Is anyone upset that if you download a version of software that has a "basic" and a "premium" version, but the premium costs more money, that you don't get the premium functionality? Just like you "can't change" whether you get premium functions if you don't pay for it, the same could be said for fsd or seat heaters.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#162

Post by michael1999 »

grecy wrote: post #68
HWR_14 wrote: post #2

Good. People who buy things should own the things they buy.

I've been thinking about this as a thought experiment lately. Let's say there's two versions of the car. Higher spec has heated seats, lower spec doesn't. Let's say it's a $1000 price difference. At what point below are you ticked off ? Level 1: The higher spec car has the physical seat heaters, all the wiring, all the plugs and all the software. The lower spec car has none of that. (I think this is how cars have alw…

Level 5 is exactly where it bugs me. Levels 1-4 are all concrete (if marginal) cost savings as compared to the full version. But your level 5 means someone spent _extra_ money and engineering time to make something _less_ functional.

Boo. Hiss.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#164

Post by d4l3k »

zoover2020 wrote: post #130
d4l3k wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the map can't talk to Tesla it'll use Google maps directly. I usually don't allow connections to Tesla on my rooted Model 3

Hoe did you root yours? Did you lose out on any functionality?

There's some functionality loss but it's mostly been mitigated. I have a custom app I wrote since I can't use the stock app.

The one feature I miss is that there's no voice commands since that requires Tesla's servers but at the same time I also haven't been bothered enough to plug in a custom backend

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#165

Post by jrmg »

RajT88 wrote: post #133
sokoloff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of thing _should_ 100% be legal (if it isn't already, and my understanding is that it is). It may fall afoul of the (terribly written, but still law) Section 1201 of the DMCA, if it's arguable that the circumvention provides access to computer software (and I think it is arguable). I agree that this should be legal , but I'm not nearly as convinced that it is legal currently.

Agree with this. The DMCA makes stuff like this illegal. Recall that when CD copy protection was starting to be deployed, you could negate it with a black marker. The DMCA then made black markers illegal, because it bans "tools which may be used to circumvent copyright" as well as the "circumvention of copy protection measures". (Not that anyone tried to enforce it, but the letter of the law was pretty clear that bla…

Black markers are/were very obviously not illegal. The law doesn’t work like code, it’s filtered by humans.

No court would ever come to the conclusion that something as mundane as black markers are illegal to possess.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#166

Post by lamontcg »

sowbug wrote: post #132
HWR_14 wrote: post #2

Good. People who buy things should own the things they buy.

I enthusiastically endorse this sentiment until I remember I'm a software engineer whose career depends pretty fundamentally on copyright law. As an industry, we sell things that make hardware more useful. That's what software is. But the software we sell* comes with legal restrictions on what the buyer* can and can't do with it. Which means that we're restricting what our customers can do with the hardware that they…

That isn't the only way to sell software, it is a relatively recent invention, I honestly wouldn't care if that went away.

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#167

Post by PicassoCTs »

Now comes the funny part, were tesla tries to make the platform trusted and locked down, and then people start to flash there own firmware and solder chip-mods, cause there is nothing GNUnder the sun.

Wouldn't be surprised if Tesla has a defeat-device buried somewhere that allows for remote permanent deactivation once parked in case of piracy

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#168

Post by jsheard »

striking wrote: post #121
vessenes wrote: post #47

Pretty sophisticated attack vector: low voltage attack on AMD secure execution environment during boot. I wonder how many tries you need to get whatever bits you need in the right place. Also, I imagine you only need to cut 12V wires to do this, but I admire the willingness to get in there direct on these systems. I'd be a little nervous to make those cuts personally. Buried in the article is the claim that this will…

> I wonder how many tries you need to get whatever bits you need in the right place. For the Xbox 360, the "Reset Glitch Hack" (which worked similarly) would just try over and over again until it got it right. A computer is happy to try tens or hundreds of times on your behalf.

However the next Xbox added active countermeasures against glitching attacks which force a reboot if the clocks, temperatures or voltages go outside of reasonable bounds, and that's never been defeated. Glitching attacks can be very powerful, but they have a limited shelf life if the hardware manufacturer cares to prevent them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#169

Post by nescioquid »

shmatt wrote: post #117
prussian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to add agreement to this, but to be more precise: people should own the things they buy and artificial (software ) means of locking people out of features shouldn't be allowed.

If you opt out of the heated seat package when you purchase the car, that doesn't mean the manufacturer can't add that hardware in a disabled state. That also doesn't mean you own the heating feature after you opted out That's like asking Intel to fix a processor you overclocked

There are semantic games at play here, I suspect.

The manufacturer sold the hardware configured in a certain state; the same device could have been configured differently depending on price. Once the device is sold, the new owner is a petty tyrant over the state of his own property.

But if I don't own the heating "feature" (promise of a result), I don't care. I am pretty sure that the warranty indemnifies the company against the hardware actually being fit for said purpose and therefore will not guarantee a result anyway, so what do you "own" in the first place, if not the device itself?

[edit: grammar, readability]

Re: Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features

#170

Post by Kirby64 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #115
hooverd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla can't sue you if you splice a switch into the seat heater relays! I don't know if that's a good idea. Or maybe they thought of that and they don't turn on unless there's some of key exchange.

That's BMW, not Tesla. Tesla only offers subscriptions for premium mobile network connectivity and FSD. A quality rocker switch would meet your needs for the BMW seat heater use case. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription... EDIT: I stand corrected. It appears there was a window of time where Tesla offered rear heated seats as an upgrade on a base trim standard range Model 3. https://electrek.c…

The cheapest Tesla's offered a one time unlock for rear seat seat heaters. Not any different from bmw, except bmw also offered a subscription option (bmw also offered a lifetime unlock... at a much higher price).
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