lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
OEMs are getting smarter about protecting their proprietary hardware from reverse engineering. Sure you can sniff the SC to car communication in an effort to reverse the process and this is perfectly legal. However, I would not be surprised if Tesla is using something like a BMWish style RSA encrypted message query to start any communication. Any tester connected to the newer BMWs will ask the car for a message. This message (RSA encrypted) is then decrypted by the tester and returned to the car for authentication before a communication session can begin.
RSA is no big deal (apart from dealing with larger numbers in a micro controller which is a PITA) but it is a big deal to posses private keys without the owner's permission. This is the part that gets the reverse engineers sued unless they can prove that they factored the keys (instead of getting them out the back door from the owners).
This communications challenge is but one way OEMs are shutting hackers down. I would think Tesla would have looked into this given the enormous warranty liability wrapped up in all those battery packs. I know I would not want anyone else charging my packs if I were writing the check to fix things that go awry.
RSA is no big deal (apart from dealing with larger numbers in a micro controller which is a PITA) but it is a big deal to posses private keys without the owner's permission. This is the part that gets the reverse engineers sued unless they can prove that they factored the keys (instead of getting them out the back door from the owners).
This communications challenge is but one way OEMs are shutting hackers down. I would think Tesla would have looked into this given the enormous warranty liability wrapped up in all those battery packs. I know I would not want anyone else charging my packs if I were writing the check to fix things that go awry.