Tesla Model S Has Hidden Ethernet Port, User Runs Firefox On the 17" Screen

New submitter FikseGTS (3604833) writes "A Tesla Model S owner located a 4 pin connector on the left side of the Tesla Model S dashboard that turns out to be a disguised ethernet networking port. After crafting his owns patch cable to connect with the Tesla's port, a networking connection was established between the Tesla Model S and a laptop computer. The Model S is running a 100 Mbps, full duplex ethernet network and 3 devices were found with assigned IP addresses in the 192.168.90.0 subnet. Some ports and services that were open on the devices were 22 (SSH), 23 (telnet),53 (open domain), 80 (HTTP), 111 (rpcbind), 2049 (NFS), 6000 (X11). Port 80 was serving up a web page with the image or media of the current song being played. The operating system is modified version of Ubuntu using an ext3 filesystem. Using X11 it also appears that someone was able to somewhat run Firefox on both of the Model S screens. Is a jailbroken Tesla Model S on the way?" Some more details on this front would be appreciated, for anyone who has a Tesla they'd like to explore.

Re:Why Ubuntu?!

[Obfuscant]

Their job was also a bit easier in that they used 4-pin rather than 6, but I guess they decided they wouldn't need GigE

GigE uses 8.

Connector type

[Anonymous Coward]

That connector seems to be a M12 standard industrial ethernet connector (IEC 61067–2–101 Amendment 1)

Re:Why Ubuntu?!

[dbIII]

I'm sure you haven't seen a red boot on a cable in many years!

The crossover cable I've got it black with black boots - there was not an official standard followed of red boots that's just what the vendor of your cable used. There are still crossover cables listed from some online suppliers.

tx to rx anymore, it auto-negotiates that now

At the switch end almost always now. I'm not so sure about some of the low end stuff on motherboards for the other end.

I can see myself using a crossover cable again soon for 10Gb ethernet if it's needed, although the switches are starting to descend from insane prices.

Re:Connector type

[Pulzar]

Yeah, it is [rsdelivers.com]. "Disguised", my ass.

Re:touch screens in cars, bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse, flown it. Touchscreens are a miserable failure in aviation. Hate that bullshit, and, oh by the way, the idiots in texas finally gave in and added radio tuning knobs because the touchscreen is so useless. Similarly, many civillian avioncs have given up on the touchscreen only, and have gone to bezel buttons for primary and touchscreeen for marketing.

Everything is watching you these days...

[Lothsahn]

The craziest thing in the article that I saw was that Tesla contacted him to tell him he couldn't do that on his car, or it'd void his warranty. Not only is he not allowed to reverse engineer how his car works, they're apparently watching his car at all times.

It won't be long before people will know what we do, 24/7.

Re:Should void warranty

[amxcoder]

You do realize that people have been hacking and reprogramming normal car ECU's for quite awhile, probably since shortly after cars got ECU's. Not only are there aftermarket "chips", and "reprogrammers" (which really only alter basic parameters), but there are also more sofisticated "Piggyback ECU's" that go inline between normal ECU and engine, and can change received signals to the ECU, and/or alter sent signals to the engine, to override much of the built-in programming on them.

They even sell completely tunable aftermarket ECU's (for racing purposes) which completely replace the factory computer and you program to suit your needs. The Hydra and Link come to mind.

I have one of the more advanced "Piggyback" type ECU on my Subaru (UTEC), and it lets me program and run custom Fuel, Timing, and boost maps. Is programmed with a normal laptop and a RS232 cable (or USB on newer models) and even adds features to the car that weren't there originally, like launch control, multi-stage redlines (for flat foot shifting). It even has addtional relay output to aid in control of nitrous or water injection systems. You can also raise/change some of the limits, like RPM and boost limiters.

Not to mention, the community of many types of cars have open source projects, that reverse engineered some of the stock ECU's to allow complete remapping of the factory units. Subaru's for instance, had an online community cataloging all the different revisions of ECU's hardware, extracting the ROM images of each, reverse engineering the contents of the ROM images (byte by byte), and developing software that let you modify the ROM's. This combined with open sourced hardware, that allows for re flashing through the OBDII port (similar to the proprietary capabilities of the manufacturers hardware). Very sophisticated and dedicated work on the car communities part.

Re:Everything is watching you these days...

[Spoke]

Actually, what's more likely is that they saw his post on the Tesla Motors Club forum detailing what he'd done and then connect the dots between the forum post and ownership data:

Successful connection on the Model S internal Ethernet network [teslamotorsclub.com]

Tesla has been known to connect forum users to actual owners and proactively contact the owners via phone when they report problems with their car there.

Update story description **Attention Moderators**

[BurningSpiral]

The connector is an M12 Industrial Ethernet Connector - as seen at http://www.designworldonline.c... [designworldonline.com] The story description should be updated so that more readers find out that they can connect to their Tesla's on-board computer via a easy to find cable.