Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Tesla's response to me leaking info about the P100D?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
..................

I figured I'd have a little fun............ And what's done is done.

So, not to sound like a jackass, but I'm going to be very blunt and make one thing perfectly clear here. Understand that I'm under ZERO obligation to keep ANYTHING I find out about Tesla, the Model S, etc, through my efforts tinkering around with my own car, private. .................

And again, if people reading about a potential P100D being talked about by me were such a big deal, Tesla should have reached out to me and said so. "Hey man, not cool," with a brief conversation that probably would have ended with my apologies and subsequent tweeting/posting of something like, "Hah, gotcha! Early April fools!" to cover up my leak.
.................................


It is certainly your choice how you handle the information that you obtained by hacking into the car's system.

It is not your choice nor your place to tell Tesla how to respond to what you did and how to defend their information from your actions and choices you made so obvious to everyone.
 
Firmware 7.1

It is certainly your choice how you handle the information that you obtained by hacking into the car's system.

It is not your choice nor your place to tell Tesla how to respond to what you did and how to defend their information from your actions and choices you made so obvious to everyone.

He's allowed to have an opinion as to how he feels they should handle it. It's up to Tesla how they do handle it, obviously. That goes without saying. I agree with darthy above; if it is really important to keep something secret you simply keep it secret. There are no leaked pictures of Model 3 for example - Tesla know how to keep a secret, but there are different levels of secrecy.
 
It is not your choice nor your place to tell Tesla how to respond to what you did and how to defend their information from your actions and choices you made so obvious to everyone.

If Tesla's response means modifying his car that he has fully paid for then, on the contrary, it certainly is his, en his alone, prerogative to decide what is acceptable or not.
 
I favor individuals (wk057) over corporations in situations like this although frankly, if I had been planning to order a new MS today (instead of being a happy owner of a P85DL) my reading this thread would freeze me completely, so I would delay ordering for days or even up to a month or two to try to get he new thing. (I delayed from summer '14, which is when I realized i wanted an MS, until the P85D introduction because I had heard rumors of all wheel drive coming, and I'm glad I did.) The point is that I believe the leak will actually cause some slowing in orders, which explains why the company is reacting strongly. Nevertheless, I'm cheering for wk.
 
The apparent fact of the matter is that Telsa's release-engineering process left information that they did not intend to make public on hardware owned by someone else who has the ability and inclination to understand the operation of the devices that he possesses. As the saying goes "If you ship it, someone will leak it". Look at Apple, their firmware images and OS builds have historically been poked at by interested parties looking for evidence of as-yet unreleased hardware.

Just because I like to stir the pot, check out 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C) :)
 
The ..126 firmware tolerates the dip for the grate in front of my garage. Prior firmware did not. I haven't tried newer firmware yet.

How high is your dip? I think .126 actually made mine a little worse. I have some boards to try to "step up" to my 1.5 inch lip, and it was working ok for a while. Now it almost fails every time, but only after it's gotten over the lip and has too much speed--then it stops itself.
 
Just because I like to stir the pot, check out 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C) :)

The Model S is not a protected computer system.

You'd have a case if Jason accessed Tesla's internal VPN and stole information from there.

But once hardware is in your hands, it's not illegal to look at or reverse engineer the software (regardless of what the EULA says; and remember, Tesla don't make you sign one.)
 
The Model S is not a protected computer system.

You'd have a case if Jason accessed Tesla's internal VPN and stole information from there.

But once hardware is in your hands, it's not illegal to look at or reverse engineer the software (regardless of what the EULA says; and remember, Tesla don't make you sign one.)

What exactly does the EULA say in this regard?
 
The apparent fact of the matter is that Telsa's release-engineering process left information that they did not intend to make public on hardware owned by someone else who has the ability and inclination to understand the operation of the devices that he possesses. As the saying goes "If you ship it, someone will leak it". Look at Apple, their firmware images and OS builds have historically been poked at by interested parties looking for evidence of as-yet unreleased hardware.

Just because I like to stir the pot, check out 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C) :)

So the question is whether a Tesla MS is a 'protected computer' which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication. Although the car is sold interstate, I'm not sure whether the controller running the firmware is involved in interstate commerce in the same way that cellphones capable of interstate calls are, or that banking computers are. I suppose case law would clarify this.

What I have been wondering is whether in executing the purchase contract for the car we all signed away our right to hack the software somewhere in the fine print.
 
It's entirely unsurprising that Tesla will do everything it can to prevent their future roadmap being revealed on anything but their own terms. If that means pissing off a high profile, high capabilities hacker of their cars, they have already taken the executive decision to do so. Can't say I blame Tesla for this one

Blame? Maybe, maybe not. But it makes them look bad in any case because as a way of mitigating the revelation of anything else that's in the image it was completely ineffective. It's not like they made the bits disappear off of wk's backup. So Tesla fails at accomplishing anything concrete and in the bargain, burns goodwill. They end up looking like a bunch of amateurs who don't know what they're doing, which I guess from a PR point of view, they might be. Someone needs to remind them what you're supposed to do when you're at the bottom of a hole (hint: it's not "dig harder").

If they wanted to play hardball, a letter from a lawyer would have been the thing, not hacking wk's car. If they wanted to do it right, a friendly phone call from Elon would have been the thing. This? It's just embarrassing. (I'm still hoping it's all a mistake, given that everything so far is circumstantial, albeit highly suggestive.)

Edited to add:

In thinking about the "play hardball" option, it occurs to me (I am not a lawyer) that it's possible that as part of taking legal action, Tesla might have been advised they had to take all feasible steps to remove access to the bits, even if they knew those steps would ultimately be ineffective. "Your honor, we did everything we were able to." I guess if wk suddenly stops posting anything about this incident, we'll know what happened -- the gag order arrived, registered mail or hand-delivery.
 
Last edited:
What I have been wondering is whether in executing the purchase contract for the car we all signed away our right to hack the software somewhere in the fine print.

At one point I looked pretty hard for legal terms of this sort and found virtually nothing. Shockingly little, really. I didn't run it past a lawyer, on the other hand the fact that I looked and found nothing means that it would be hard to convince a judge that any kind of contract of adhesion could be made to stick (for a click-through license to have any hope of sticking, you have to at least have had the opportunity to see the license terms).
 
I don't get the mindset of those saying not to reveal info. If it causes folks to hold off on an order, so what? Wouldn't you rather new owners be happy that they waited vs getting the car and seeing a month later all sorts of things they could have had?
 
I don't get the mindset of those saying not to reveal info. If it causes folks to hold off on an order, so what? Wouldn't you rather new owners be happy that they waited vs getting the car and seeing a month later all sorts of things they could have had?

As an enthusiast, yah totally, release ALL THE SECRETS!
As a stockholder, no, do not Osborne Tesla.
 
So the question is whether a Tesla MS is a 'protected computer' which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication.

*Shrug* I was assuming all of this firmware-poking was happening on the CID, which is used for communication purposes.

case law would clarify this

Man asks his lawyer: "Is this legal?"
Lawyer: "Yes, if you're acquitted."

... but I digress. Tesla has a pretty fantastic mobile (wearable?) computing platform. It's a real shame that the product story around it has sort of died on the vine. Hope for an API, projection, or a sandboxed runtime springs eternal.
 
As a stockholder I care about long term customer value. Sales in a 3-4 week period dropping in exchange for happier customers...

As someone who's vehicle went into production overnight I'll be pretty upset if something "good" outside of a P100D model gets announced soon.

I don't blame wk one bit. He has enough experience to do the right thing here for the average owner.
 
As a shareholder I am not worried about the Osbourne effect on TSLA (I had to look that up, thought it was Ozzy). All cars go through product cycles/model year changes. We've all been trained to that at this point. Yes, now the X90D is king. Later the X100D, then the X120D, etc... Just like V6 carb to fuel injection to turbo to supercharger to biturbo, etc... Tesla is not a "Starting" company like Osbourne, more like a "Started" company moving into the mainstream.

Yes, wk may have been able to be even more discrete about his discovery (I looked at it an thought it was DAMN discrete, but I ain't anywhere IT/code savvy), but I can understand his excitement about it. Tweeting it at 3am is a "Eureka" moment for him. Who else can he share his excitement with?

That being said, White Hat Hackers are a MUST for a company like Tesla. As far as I know Tesla does not offer bounties on hacks. For wk to find stuff and make it known to Tesla is crucial for your average purchaser. Recall the Jeep Cherokee hacking news? I would hope that Tesla does not retaliate against wk, as that bug in the bonnet is key to making a better product.

PS: my stupid definition of start ups:

Starting --> Start up --> Started --> Moving into Mainstream --> Mainstream, etc...
 
wk ... all due respect, but is it possible they felt YOU took the first swing today? More than one way to look at today's events. I assume because of your past interactions with the engineering team, you've built up some relationship. All of a sudden, they see you informing the world (and the top guy directly, Elon himself) that they didn't keep something very well hidden, instead of just telling them directly. I can't help but think that they might feel a bit burned by someone they thought was an ally. Just another way to look at it.

I can certainly see why Tesla would not be pleased by this potential feature reveal, but I see the response as completely out of line, and certainly ham-fisted. As I see it, Tesla essentially left some litter on Jason's front yard with what they feel is confidential information printed on it. He published it in the newspaper. They came back in the night, trespassed on his property and tried to recover the material (likely out of concern about other important information left there carelessly). If it were my front yard, I wouldn't be happy to discover this either. If the information was valuable, Tesla should have been more careful about where they left it. If they wanted to recover it, they could have rung the doorbell first.

Up-dated:

My college age daughter believes this is actually guerrilla-war marketing by Tesla. The plant was intentional, and put there with the knowledge someone would find it. And the ninja attck response only expands the on-line buzz. Free advertising for the new model. Maybe Jason's being used in a great marketing conspiracy! :eek:
 
Last edited:
This may not be the right time, but I REALLY want to know that other piece of information wk is withholding.

I imagine it's a picture of the facelifted 100D of the sort that would be displayed on the car's screens. My guess is that his intent to confer with his attorney is to guage his exposure if he releases/discusses it. I selfishly hope he is advised that he can do it. I do infer that the upcoming change in the car is significant enough to be visible in such a picture.