• Articles
    • Editorial Articles
    • Research Articles
    • WatchGuard Articles
  • The 443 Podcast
  • Threat Landscape
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Contribute to Secplicity

Secplicity - Security Simplified

Powered by WatchGuard Technologies

Cracking Teslas Window And Its Backend

July 19, 2019 By Trevor Collins

Tesla Car

This week, a security researcher named Sam Curry wrote about a recent research project where he cracked his Tesla and found a vulnerability in it. As part of his research, he attempted a XSS (cross-site scripting) injection when setting up his car’s name in the in-car menu system. After a few tries with no results he decided to call it a night.

In his Blog post, Sam wrote that he didn’t think anything of the test and actually forgot about it since he didn’t get any results for a while. Then one day while driving down the highway a rock cracked his windshield and he made an appointment to get it fixed. Later he received a text from Tesla saying they were looking into fixing the cracked windshield. He checked the XSS server and found out that his script forwarded information from teslamotors.com, indicating the XSS attack worked.

After investigating, he found information about his car loaded to his server by the exploit. While he found nothing truly private, or at least that’s what he described in his report, he accessed a server that likely had more information on it. He even expects that he could modify vehicle configurations if given more time. Being a responsible hacker, he presented his findings to Tesla and they patched their software the same day.

Most website admins know to protect their website from cross-site-scripting, but some applications may accept un-sanitized inputs and pass them on to the back-end server. If you don’t sanitize all user inputs, they it could be exploited with cross-site scripting. We recommend you follow the OWASP prevention models including XSS prevention here.

Share This:

Related

Filed Under: Editorial Articles Tagged With: Infosec news, xss

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The 443 Podcast

A weekly podcast featuring the leading white-hat hackers and security researchers. Listen Now
the 443 podcast

Threat Landscape

Filter and view Firebox Feed data by type of attack, region, country, and date range. View Now
threat landscape

Top Posts

  • Cybersecurity News: Free Cybersecurity Training, TrickBot Group Exposed, Major GoDaddy Breach, and Russia to Legalize cybercrime?!
  • US National Cybersecurity Strategy
  • 3CX Supply Chain Attack
  • Here Come The Regulations

Email Newsletter

Sign up to get the latest security news and threat analysis delivered straight to your inbox

By signing up you agree to our Privacy Policy.


The views and opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of WatchGuard Technologies.

Stay in Touch

Recent Posts

  • 3CX Supply Chain Attack
  • The NSA’s Guidance on Securing Authentication
  • Cybersecurity News: LastPass Incident Revealed, White House Issues Cybersecurity Strategy, FBI Purchases Leaked USHOR PII Data, and a Slew of Other Breaches
  • An Update on Section 230
  • Here Come The Regulations
View All

Search

Archives

Copyright © 2023 WatchGuard Technologies · Cookie Policy · Privacy Policy · Terms of Use