News Researchers Jailbreak Tesla's $15,000 FSD With Unpatchable AMD Chip Flaw

[Admin]

From Acceleration Boost to Full Self-Driving, researchers have uncovered a way to unlock Tesla's paid upgrades.

Researchers Jailbreak Tesla's $15,000 FSD With Unpatchable AMD Chip Flaw : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

Usually not a person who cheers this stuff, but its Tesla & musk...git rekt.

 

[Giroro]

You never own your Tesla, you merely pay for it.

It's like I've been saying: we'll never fully win the Right to Repair until we reclaim our right to own.

 

[Endymio]

Usually not a person who cheers this stuff, but its Tesla & musk...git rekt.

In other words, you have ethics and morals -- except for people you don't like. Got it.

 

[Eximo]

A two sided problem.

On the one hand, they only have to manufacture one vehicle type (simplifying here, I know there are several models and sub-models) and sell the same model at different prices to different people. So some people get savings and some people get the features.

On the other hand, the R&D is going to happen regardless. Why not let everyone have the feature if you went to the trouble of updating the software on the car in case they decided to pay. Even if they raised the price of the vehicles by 5%, people likely wouldn't notice or car that much and rather than getting $15,000 from 10000 people they could get $1500 from 100,000 people and then everyone would have the feature and the company wouldn't lose out on the profit.

I think it really comes to down to exclusivity marketing.

My car has at least one feature like that where I can pay extra for something the vehicle already has in hardware. In that case the R&D cost is literally zero, so that is really stupid.

 

[hotaru251]

except for people you don't like.

not really
even ppl I dont like i generally dont want to have bad thigns happen to.

Just tesla (its awful and started whole casr as a service thing) & Musk is constantly doing stupid crap.

Why not let everyone have the feature if you went to the trouble of updating the software on the car in case they decided to pay.

profit.

Business has to be good for them to not change it. Meaning enough ppl pay to make it worth keeping.

Also some places don't let vendors change price of cars too much (iirc Canada has a law that limits it).

 

[TerryLaze]

In that case the R&D cost is literally zero, so that is really stupid.

It's not just R&D , for example the completely self driving thing would need a lot of compute or at least support of some kind from the cloud, that's a lot of money tesla has to provide for that feature every month it's not a one and done thing.
The higher acceleration probably kills the battery way sooner which is also a higher cost for tesla.

 

[Eximo]

profit.

Obviously. A fine example of the old supply & demand A-B-C pricing.

You can generate more profit selling the exact same thing at three different prices.

They made that illegal, and yet here we are...

 

[Eximo]

It's not just R&D , for example the completely self driving thing would need a lot of compute or at least support of some kind from the cloud, that's a lot of money tesla has to provide for that feature every month it's not a one and done thing.
The higher acceleration probably kills the battery way sooner which is also a higher cost for tesla.

I understand that the cloud services is the justification/loophole that the auto industry is using at the moment.

But the stupid examples like heated seats and changing a bit in a car to allow higher power output costs them nothing. Or that time Toyota accidentally disabled everyone's remote start on accident because remote start via app was tied to keyfob remote start.

I think it is GM that is basically killing On Star on vehicles after they are a certain age (might have to find that one again, it was really disappointing)

Assuming Tesla has any need to do a warranty battery replacement. I would be more worried about the motor controllers popping an IGBT.

 

[TerryLaze]

So basically every ps and xbox console is also possible to jailbreak right?!
This could be really terrible for AMD, every big customer could stop using their APUs and it's the only thing that makes them money at times of low PC/GPU sales.

 

[Eximo]

So basically every ps and xbox console is also possible to jailbreak right?!
This could be really terrible for AMD, every big customer could stop using their APUs and it's the only thing that makes them money at times of low PC/GPU sales.

They don't use the same silicon, surely. Article is a little vague saying it is a flaw in Zen 2 and 3 cores though, so it might apply to anything with fTPM?

 

[TerryLaze]

They don't use the same silicon, surely. Article is a little vague saying it is a flaw in Zen 2 and 3 cores though, so it might apply to anything with fTPM?

This is a systemic issue with their general hardware which is why it's unpatchable. If the APU of the PS5 has the pins that connect to the TPM then you can use them to do the same hack there.

Edit:
Article making the same assumptions

AMD Zen 2 Secure Processor Bootrom leaked, (f)TPM compromised & more AMD Vulnerabilities spark PS5 Scene's interest - Wololo.net

AMD’s secure Processor (SP, a.k.a. PSP) bootroms for ZEN and ZEN2 architectures have been recently leaked, sparking interest in the PS5 security Community. Additionally, a few weeks ago, security researchers demonstrated how to compromise...

wololo.net

 

[rluker5]

So basically every ps and xbox console is also possible to jailbreak right?!
This could be really terrible for AMD, every big customer could stop using their APUs and it's the only thing that makes them money at times of low PC/GPU sales.

Not Xbox, it has a pluton coprocessor. Talks right to the cloud and can bypass the os. MS owns anything with pluton, the people who bought it just think they do.

 

[Carson365]

Unfortunately for consumers wanting to hack their own cars to enable FSD, in theory it's as easy as requiring a download from Tesla servers after purchase for Tesla to 'patch' this. It would still be possible to 'enable' autopilot in your car's software, but since you didn't pay for it and didn't get the download, you can't use it because you'll be missing crucial software components for it to work.

 

[RedBear87]

Wasn't Tesla's MCU based on Zen+? As far as I know it's a combination of Zen+ and a discrete Navi 23 (28CUs, basically an RX6600). The article says that this vulnreability should affect Zen 2 and Zen 3.

 

[JamesJones44]

My car has at least one feature like that where I can pay extra for something the vehicle already has in hardware. In that case the R&D cost is literally zero, so that is really stupid.

I wouldn't call it "zero". What the R&D cost per vehicle ends up being depends on how many people subscribe to it and if they are charging for it up front or not. In many cases like this they don't add the cost of the R&D, continued support, infra, etc. into the initial price for features like these (they do include the hardware costs, if any). So if no one subscribes, the R&D cost is extremely high. In the case where everyone subscribes then the R&D cost is well amortized off by the number of subscribers over the periods they are subscribed. In those cases the R&D ends up being negligible in terms of cost.

The question you have to ask yourself is, would you rather them just charge an extra $1000 for each vehicle or just let the people who want to sub, sub? I know you will likely say "just don't include it", but that's not realistic unless everyone stops asking for these features and stops paying for subs enough to make it not profitable.

 

[cryoburner]

It's not just R&D , for example the completely self driving thing would need a lot of compute or at least support of some kind from the cloud, that's a lot of money tesla has to provide for that feature every month it's not a one and done thing.
The higher acceleration probably kills the battery way sooner which is also a higher cost for tesla.

While I'm sure the self driving features require continual updates that cost them significant money to develop and deliver, I have some doubts that there would be much realtime compute based on a car's sensors being performed on their servers, as that would likely be unreliable, so it doesn't seem likely that enabling the feature on an individual car would directly cost them all that much. Of course, their reasoning may be that there are significant R&D costs involved, and charging a lesser fee to everyone would just drive up the minimum cost for those who don't necessarily want it. And there's also the likelihood that they might want to limit how many vehicles have access to the feature for liability reasons. If a car ends up crashing in self-driving mode, they are likely to face lawsuits, and part of the pricey self-driving fee may go toward paying for that. If everyone had access to the feature, there would likely be significantly more lawsuits, but not a proportionate amount of additional profit coming in from the feature to pay for them.

The acceleration boost could have similar liability concerns, though I agree that it could also shorten the life of components, potentially resulting in increased warranty claims, particularly when the expensive battery is covered to maintain at least 70% of its initial capacity for 8 years. But some things like giving all cars of a particular model heated seats and then locking the feature behind a $300 paywall seems a bit absurd.

One thing to consider about this "jailbreaking" though is that if Tesla detects it, that could be grounds for voiding a car's warranty. And that's probably something one wouldn't want to do when the cost of replacing the car's battery outside of warranty could be around $20,000 or more. And what happens if you are involved in an accident, and the insurance company determines that you made aftermarket modifications to your car's computer system? If things go wrong, one might regret trading in their warranty and potentially voiding their insurance coverage just to enable a feature that they probably didn't really need.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

It may be "unpatchable", but there are ways to mitigate it. Having the cars report their activated features to Tesla's servers and remotely deactivating and blocking their reactivation by deleting the features from the system's software if they don't match up with payer records, for example. I believe they already do this if you buy a used Tesla, you have to buy those features again.

 

[TechieTwo]

Tesla seems to have a lot of issues including safety issues so this may be the least of their concerns.

 

[Amdlova]

Every car has issues... people goes mad with tesla.
People need to watch the Scotty Kilmer on YouTube.

 

[gdmaclew]

Any one who pays $2,000 for a half-second acceleration boost has more money than brains.

 

[zx128k]

This will allow people to mod their cars, upgrade and repair them. This means wreaked car can be repaired and you can install the software to get them to run.

 

[King_V]

Any one who pays $2,000 for a half-second acceleration boost has more money than brains.

You're, uh, not familiar with hot-rodding at all, are you? Camshafts, carburetors, ECM recalibration, intakes, cylinder heads, etc., etc?

Some mods have a great bang-per-buck, some, less so. That said, shaving a little over half a second off of 0-60 times requires a rather significant power boost.

 

[Murissokah]

The idea of having the hardware in my car and not being able to use it sounds very silly to me. I hope this breach nudges them towards rethinking this model and release the cars with all features available.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

Every car has issues... people goes mad with tesla.

Tesla and Rivian cars have so many horrendous quality problems.

It's not just "people" pointing it out, facts do too.