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by skgoa 2514 days ago
As an automotive security engineer, I have to interject. Miller and Valasek hacked into a car that was very far removed from what we consider modern automotive electronics. Any truly modern car will have decoupled networks with firewalls in-between. It will have intrusion detection systems, secure boot, signed code, encrypted memory, will communicate critical information via TLS etc.

The Jeep hack (as well as their Toyota and Ford hacks) was exptremely important, because it put public pressure on the less technologically capable OEMs to get with the times and implement a (somewhat) secure electronics architecture. As someone who shares the road with those shitty cars I'm thankful for that. But even at the time of the hack, there were many OEMs whose cars were not anywhere close to that vulnerable and the industry hasn't stood still since then.

And since you mention Tesla, I also have to point out that they are one of the worst at security. E.g. they have an RJ45 port behind the dash that you can just plug into. It used to be that this gave you complete access to everything, but people abused it. So Tesla made it a little bit harder, though not impossible, to get into their system. Tesla also has a lot of bugs in their smartphone integration that allow "fun" exploits like remote unlocking.