Is The Tesla Hackable?

It’s the curse of the connected car once it’s linked to the Internet, it’s, well, on the Internet. In the case of the Tesla Model S, this means that mischievous hackers could, in theory, control some functions of the vehicle and even snoop without the owner’s knowledge.

Tesla offers Android and iPhone apps for Model S owners, which can be used to check the vehicle’s battery, track its location and status, and tweak several other settings, like climate control and the sunroof. It can also be used to unlock the doors on the Model S.

Dell senior engineer George Reese says the REST API used by Tesla to provide access for Android and iPhone apps has several fairly serious security flaws, which could offer a way in for unscrupulous hackers.

According to an article written by Reese for O’Reilly, Tesla appears to have broken from accepted best practice when designing the API for the Model S.

“It’s flawed in a way that makes no sense. Tesla ignored most conventions around API authentication and wrote their own. As much as I talk about the downsides to OAuth (a standard for authenticating consumers of REST APIs–Twitter uses it), this scenario is one that screams for its use,” he wrote.

However, Reese notes, this is merely a potential attack vector, not one that could be immediately exploited. That said, a compromised website particularly one designed to provide “value-added services” via the API to Tesla drivers could prove highly damaging.

“I can … honk their horns, flash their lights, and open and close the sunroof. While none of this is catastrophic, it can certainly be surprising and distracting while someone is driving,” Reese wrote.

Automotive hacking has been posited by experts for some time, and several presentations at this year’s Defcon detailed fairly comprehensive methods of compromising some models.

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Yahoo Messenger Flaw Exposed

An unpatched Yahoo Messenger vulnerability that allows hackers to change people’s status messages and possibly perform other unauthorized functons can be exploited to spam malicious links to a large number of users.

The flaw was discovered in the wild by security researchers from antivirus vendor BitDefender while investigating a customer’s report about unusual Yahoo Messenger behavior.

The flaw appears to be located in the application’s file transfer API (application programming interface) and allows attackers to send malformed requests that result in the execution of commands without any interaction from victims.

“An attacker can write a script in less than 50 lines of code to malform the message sent via the YIM protocol to the attacker,” said Bogdan Botezatu, an e-threats analysis & communication specialist at BitDefender.

“Status changing appears to be only one of the things the attacker can abuse. We’re currently investigating what other things they may achieve,” he added.

Victims are unlikely to realize that their status messages have changed and if they use version 11.5 of Yahoo Messenger, which supports tabbed conversations, they might not even spot the rogue requests, Botezatu said.

This vulnerability can be leveraged by attackers to earn money through affiliate marketing schemes by driving traffic to certain websites or to spam malicious links that point to drive-by download pages.

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