[driverdan]

“Tesla USA engineers have seen a tentative of hacking on my car.”, “can be related to industrial espionage and advised me to stop investigation, to not void the warranty”.

So long as you don't cause any damage they can't void your warranty in the US thanks to the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act.

[jnbiche]

And that's a mighty hacker-unfriendly stance to take for a company whose client base is made up of a disproportionately large number of engineers and computer scientists, many of whom will doubtless be curious as to the inner workings of their car computer systems.

I mean, could you imagine if a car manufacturer took this attitude toward car owners who were exploring the car's transmission, which is clearly just as critical to the car's safety as the car computer system?

My view of Tesla just sank a notch (but I still want one).

Edit: Actually, I thought about it a bit, and I actually don't want one anymore if this is the attitude that prevails inside the company. For the same reason that I don't want any Apple products. I'm far from a Stallman acolyte, but I'll be damned if I'll buy from a company that wants to forbid me from hacking on hardware that I have purchased and own.

[Vespasian]

I think there is a difference between hacking (or even exploring) something like a phone, game console or router and a car, plane or any other thing that can immediately put in danger the live and health of many unrelated persons.

Therefore I thinks Tesla acts as responsible as they should when detecting and reacting upon active (as opposed to passively analyzing radio transmissions) manipulation of their cars inner systems. As other comments have pointed out you don't want to find out about bugs in critical systems triggered by your entertainment system jailbreak when driving with 100km/h+ on a crowded highway.

Your phone hack / mod fails badly => Buy a new phone Your car hack fails badly => People die

It's simply not worth it.

[kalleboo]

Car modification has been around since cars started coming off assembly lines - everything from purely aesthetic stuff to lifting or lowering the suspension, turbos, nitrous oxide etc. Software is just the next step. There are even open source ECUs now http://hackaday.com/2014/01/01/building-an-engine-control-un... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312898525/rusefi-gpl-au...

[kybernetikos]

> Tesla... of their cars

This is the key point. If I've bought it, the car does not belong to Tesla anymore and they have no valid reason to be policing what the owner of the car is doing with it. If there should be rules against modification, then that should be the purview of vehicle licensing, not Tesla (and while you're at it, you should probably outlaw people maintaining their own cars or building them from scratch too.) The most that is reasonable is for them to refuse to honor the warranty if I've damaged it while modifying.

[bloat]

You don't have to outlaw homebrew vehicles. The car already has to pass an inspection to be allowed on the road. I guess, if it doesn't already, that the inspection will soon have to include that any safety critical software is unmodified. And when people are making their own fly by wire cars, and writing their own software - who knows how they'll certify it.

[Vespasian]

It's certainly true that the manufacturer should have no say over what you do with your car (if they had what would stop them from going the way of the printer industry and force you to only use their tires etc).

I might have misused the words "their" in this sentence so what I was trying to say is that since modifying software can very easy (no special tools, garage or knowledge required, just an unchecked download and a 5€ self made adapter of ebay) I'm in the favour of locking down security critical systems (the WHOLE car) as much as possible since not only you but everyone around you is concerned at least until checks associated with getting a valid license are updated and enforced.

What would be really great is if manufactures where to offer an API to allow developers and hackers customizations where they make sense (like adding your favourite online service) and not forcing them through the whole process of trial and error.

[takeda]

Given that the fires were blown out of proportion by the media, I'm totally not surprised that they reacted this way.

Imagine headlines if someone would be killed due to not correctly operating component because the owner used a buggy mod.

[Dylan16807]

If that's possible from the entertainment system bus rather than hotwiring chips and critical inaccessible wires, they deserve such headlines.

[threeseed]

The only thing blown out of proportion is the reaction by Tesla and their supporters to the media. The media is doing what they do. Presenting stories that people care about. Major incidents to a brand that is new and popular is absolutely newsworthy.

But just because there maybe a bad story or two doesn't mean that Tesla should prevent people from doing whatever they want to their own car.

[sebastianavina]

Maybe all the source code of the media system is written in Python, and everybody can see / modify the code..

[eridius]

Poking around an unknown device's network and sending arbitrary commands to see how it responds could certainly very well damage something.

[threeseed]

So could poking around the physical components of the car.

But people are well within the right to do so.

[Maxious]

On page 53 of the "Adventures in Automotive Network and Control Units" paper there's a photo of what happened to the researchers garage after a command to run diagnostics on the brakes left the vehicle unable to stop even at slow speeds http://illmatics.com/car_hacking.pdf