Tesla Model S Has Hidden Ethernet Port, User Runs Firefox On the 17" Screen 208
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.
Why Ubuntu?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I would feel safer on the road with CentOS. :P
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:5, Funny)
"I would feel safer on the road with CentOS. :P"
"Bug report: Won't turn left"
To turn left please turn the steering wheel two times to the left, press the brake, and then turn the steering wheel to the right. This is a feature to prevent accidental left turns.
"Bug report closed"
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:5, Funny)
Is that the Kay Sievers [freedesktop.org] reply?
Closed: Wontfix, Not a bug
Again, move discussions to the mailing list; this is a bug tracker, but there is no bug to track or fix here.
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That was part of my inspiration actually. The other thing was CentOS over-complicating really simple things for..questionable reasons.
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:4, Funny)
Left is a generic term.
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:4, Funny)
I would feel safer on the road with CentOS.
What, you want your car to last 10 years?
Quick, somebody come up with a car analogy to explain this...
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Elon Musk is no ordinary car dealer. Perhaps he could totally understand. Where many car dealers would consult their Chilton's, not find the problem or time to fix, and just make up something which allowed them to smile broadly, very broadly indeed.
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I want to know how he matched up the pins and the baud rate.
Screw that up on something like a car you're probably in for expensive repair and a real bad time at the car dealer [...]
I cant wait to see the data on how he did the whole thing.
It's Ethernet. I'm pretty sure nothing bad will happen if you accidentally switch two of the wires. You just won't get a connection. 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 for whatever this was designed for. :)
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure nothing bad will happen
BRB, bricking my $100k car ...
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Exactly. Ethernet is transfomer coupled, so just try the various combinations until it works.
What if they didn't implement the full Ethernet spec... and it's similar to Ethernet, but not transformer coupled?
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Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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.
To Clarify (Score:2)
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10baseT and 100baseT do not have 'auto cable reversing' but gig-E does.
if your switch is gig-e or your nic is, then the cable wont' matter.
but if you are all 'fast ether' the cable does still matter (cross or straight).
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It depends on if you're doing GbE or regular 10/100. GbE transceivers auto-negotiate, so you don't really even need to bother wiring connectors correctly. 10/100 transceivers don't do this, however.
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Got 4 of them here. BIAMP DSP's all come with a nice crossover.
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Check you backend equipment. It is an error catching mechanism. You need to connect the upsteam ports to downstream ports, etc. If they autonegotiate you could connect them wrong and expose your intranet to the internet. If you for some reason want to connect it in a non-standard way you need a crossed cable.
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no idea how they found it, but two possible ideas:
1. They found something that was more obviously Ethernet elsewhere and just traced it to this port.
2. They stuck a scope on it and saw something that looked like a link pulse [wikipedia.org], then assumed it was Ethernet from there.
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last thing we need is someone to void their warranty and have the thing crash and burn because someone thought it would be fun to overclock the engine timing.
What would constitute the "engine timing" on an all electric car?
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What would constitute the "engine timing" on an all electric car?
Timing in this case would be the phase of the variable frequency drive that powers the motor.
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100baseTX uses 1V differential signaling. If you guess wrong, you're more likely to blow up your network card than the car. Once you guess the pairs correctly, autonegotiation figures out the speed for you.
Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score:5, Funny)
I want to know how he matched up the pins and the baud rate.
Grandpa ... I told you not to post to /. until after you took your metamucil.
JK :-P
SkyNet is here (Score:3, Funny)
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But they run Linux, neither Windows nor MacOS...
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The Teslas will be the front-line soldiers when skynet finally awakes and claims its birth-right.
You just gave me a whole new perspective on self-driving cars. *shudder*
While driving? (Score:2)
Or parked
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totally separate
We have a word for that. It's "separate."
Anyway, your guess is wrong. While this system may only be a receiver of data, it is most certainly connected to "the stuff that actually matters."
Re:While driving? (Score:5, Funny)
totally separate
We have a word for that. It's "separate."
Yes! Thank you! Redundant superlatives are a bugaboo of mine too. Our struggle against them never ends.
It's a shame. People like us are really unique.
Wait...
touch screens in cars, bad idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think touch screens are kind of dangerous in a car. I know what my dials and buttons do and can control them by feel while watching the road. touch screens not so much
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Is this a car analogy to the famous porn games/sex doll argument?
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"I think touch screens are kind of dangerous in a car. I know what my dials and buttons do and can control them by feel ..."
You mean you're tapping your dials all the time because you don't trust them.
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Hate to tell you, but touch screens have been a staple for fighter jets for a few days now, I'd guess if that needs a heck of a lot of attention it would probably not be done...
That said, you can indeed define touchscreens so that you need no "look" to know what you're doing. It takes some brain during designing and some brain during usage, that's true, but else, it's very doable.
Re:touch screens in cars, bad idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to tell you, but fighter pilots are trained professionals who spend years learning how to use their equipment in an efficient way that doesn't interfere with their flying of the plane.
Also, the obvious complexity of flying a supersonic $10e9 machine designed to blow stuff up notwithstanding, the problem domain of flying a fighter jet does not involve such things as traffic and obstacles, which is why we've had automatic pilots 60 years ago, but we're only barely beginning to have auto-driving cars.
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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.
Re:touch screens in cars, bad idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bet you fighter jet pilots are 900,000 times more trained than the idiots that I drive to work in the morning with on the highway. The people I see driving can barely keep a car between two painted lines and off of rumble strips.
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And how often are those fighter pilots confronted by pedestrians stepping out in front of them, or a traffic light turning red, when they are flying in the air?
Having flown and with many hours riding[1] in various planes, I can assure you that when flying, there are usually far less obstacles and distractions while cruising aloft. You can safely spend several(or more) seconds for a touch screen or other controls, unlike driving a ground vehicle.
Take-off and landing, as well as intricate manuevers/formation
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99.9999% of all work a fighter pilot does in normal operation is HOTAS - hands on throttle and stick. There are enough controls on those inputs, or within close reach to them, that you can operate the aircraft without ever taking your hands off them.
And while multifunctional displays are a staple in cockpits these days, they are invariably not touch screen in military aircraft.
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The Model S does have physical controls as well, some on the steering wheel and some on the dash.
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millions of products are designed by idiots for idiots.
what exactly are you trying to prove, here?
any experienced UI designer (for things like cars, planes, boats, etc) knows that TACTILE is important and not something you give away. pressing on glass is the worst you can get in tactile.
only an idiot designs those for cars.
yes, I called musk an idiot. in this area, he let idiots design a UI that had no business doing it. he is clearly appealing to other rich idiots who don't really want a good UI design.
Should void warranty (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to jailbreak your phone/tablet/television/refrigerator/etc., power to you. If you do anything that impairs reliability, the worst case is that you can't make a phone call, or your ice-cream melts. You're not having any impact on other people.
If you jailbreak your car, however, and inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road. Everything (including braking) in Tesla cars is tied into the software, and this is not something you should mess around with.
Re:Should void warranty (Score:5, Interesting)
If you jailbreak your car, however, and inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road. Everything (including braking) in Tesla cars is tied into the software, and this is not something you should mess around with.
Bullshit. Tesla has stated that the computer that controls the 17" and panel LCDs are completely separated from the important stuff in the car. They'd be stupid not to. Case in point, you can reboot both systems by holding left and right buttons on the steering wheel. You can do so while driving, I've personally done it. The music stops playing, and you need to put your gps destination in again after it finishes rebooting. If you reboot the panel screen, you lose your speedometer until it boots back up. Steering, acceleration, braking, cruise control, it all continues to work normally.
Yes, you can change driving settings from that interface, but it doesn't mean the functionality resides in that interface. It just passes the message through to much more robust computer handling actual car functions, and I'm sure said messages are sanitized to the extreme on the receiving end.
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It can't do the things it does without being connected. It might only be a receiver of data, but it's sure as hell connected.
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And corporations are never incompetent or lie..
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Hrm. The Tesla touchscreen give your instrumentation and feedback on powerplant performance, and it allows you to control the headlamps, doors, regenerative braking and hydraulics. I'm not clear on what kind of "complete separation" were talking about. If an attacker got into the touchscreen they probably wouldn't be able to brick the whole car, but if you lost th
Re:Should void warranty (Score:4, Funny)
If the attacker loaded up a whole playlist full of Justin Bieber? you be your will be in a buttload of trouble if you lose touchscreen control...
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As others have pointed out, there's a hell of a lot more connectivity between the two systems than you're implying, and... firmware updates would be done over the same network that jailbreakers are messing with.
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My s550 does the same, so there is obviously some work around here. I had 2 occasions where my car lost the display and both speed and rpm on the screen were lost. They come back after 15 seconds and the system reboots. But there is obviously a work around here, it can't be "illegal".
Really? (Score:2)
So, I see two scenarios are possible:
A. It appears this is a chronic problem across the industry and none of the engineers, regulators, or lawyers has caught it until slashdot anonymous coward saved the world with his po
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"...inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road. "
People fix their breaks, gears, engines all the time since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
You don't need software to be stupid.
Re:Should void warranty (Score:5, Insightful)
If you jailbreak your car, however, and inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road.
Yeah? So? That's what insurance is for.
Secondly, you don't seem to have remembered that there are over 100 years of DIY automobile engineering (commonly called hotrodding).
Are you German or something?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
--
BMO
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you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road.
Yeah? So? That's what insurance is for.
No, no it isn't. You can modify you car any way you like, right up until the point you start affecting other people's safety.
Are you a libertarian perhaps? There are lots of libertarians arguing against speeding tickets and DUI charges because they didn't actually hurt anyway, so it is a victimless crime. Actually if people know there are lots of idiots speeding and drinking on a particular road they will avoid it since they probably don't want to die, and thus have been denied safe use of a publicly owned
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So... Who cares if you have an accident that kills or maims someone else because you ignored the manufacturers instructions to modify something.... As long as someone else is around to pick up the bill?
Are you American or something?
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If you jailbreak your car, however, and inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road. Everything (including braking) in Tesla cars is tied into the software, and this is not something you should mess around with.
Do you give this same speech to all the BMW owners who buy custom performance mod chips?
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Those are car guys not "bimmer" owners. a vary big difference. Anyone that does any real German car modding (or motorcycle) know there are two very very separate groups owning BMW cars and bikes.
You have the "bimmers" and the gear heads, the bimmers are the raging assholes that drive 3 feet from your bumper and has the dealer do everything while repeating the "best driving machine in the world" mantra... the gear heads are the guys that turn wrenches and do mods and are quick to point out that German e
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I am in the gearhead category. I'm just waiting for my little 328i to go out of warranty so I can start playing with some go-faster mods.
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lol. I'm a VW owner, so my mods are just to keep the fucker running.
Just jailbreaking the radio/cassette/CD/mp3 player (Score:2)
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Car stereos don't control braking.
There is more than one system in these things (Score:2)
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If you jailbreak your car, however, and inadvertently change something that impairs reliability, you're compromising the safety of everybody else on the road.
I share your outrage. Can you imagine if people were allowed to make modifications to their cars? We'd better stuff this cat back in the bag before someone overheats their pushrods.
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Note that he said "compromising the safety of everybody else on the road". Generally most places allow modifications to cars as long as the vehicle still meets the legal safety standards. No ultra bright blinding headlights, and no blacking out your headlights either.
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I'm just saying, nothing new about tinkering with your car. Even if you stick with the "pros", your average Aamco/Midas brake installer is - well - not exactly a high bar there.
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They even sell complet
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I wonder if you can overclock it.
I just had a mental image of a pimped-out Tesla with massive heatsink fins sticking out of the hood. Brings the concept of a "hot rod" to a whole new level...
damn hackers, don't they know this is *dangerous*? (Score:5, Funny)
For the love of God, if you're going to hack while driving, at least get yourself a safety device [amazon.com].
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iirc, that had a ton of user submitted photos and they were funny as hell. looks like amazon took the user photos down. too bad, it really gave context to the 'reviews' on that product.
... modified version of Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume they made all their sources available to Tesla owners, right?
It's only a matter of time (Score:2)
You know, it could be that Tesla enlists the help of elite hackers who have compromised other high-flying products [bbc.com] to harden their systems before somebody gets killed?
Connector type (Score:5, Informative)
That connector seems to be a M12 standard industrial ethernet connector (IEC 61067–2–101 Amendment 1)
Re:Connector type (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, it is [rsdelivers.com]. "Disguised", my ass.
X11? (Score:2)
It would be nice to know if there is some sort of window manager running there. If so, it might be possible to add hosts to this network running their own X clients.
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Just add an aftermarket wifi access point to the ethernet connection, then you can attach any number of local network X clients to the X server. Tablets, laptops, et al.
Slap that bitch inside the dash or something. They usually eat 12v DC anyway, so it shouldnt be hard to wire in.
Just make sure you aren't a total retard. Put the broadcast power on the access point to the absolute minimum needed to service the vehicle's interior, and use WPA2. Also, set access restrictions on the SSH, Telnet, and other vulne
Jailbroken? (Score:2)
The idea you would jailbreak it assumes the system is actually heavily secured like an iPhone. Maybe it's just an Ubuntu system with no special security in place, and it's just a matter of booting it from an external drive or something similar.
Anyway, it would be kind of odd trying to stop you tinkering with it, as if you could tell users not to adjust their valve timing or not to pull their differential apart.
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Uh, a Tesla doesn't have valves to time... just saying.
Power over Ethernet? (Score:2)
Sounds like a very slow way to charge your sportscar when all you have is a Cat5 cable. :)
Everything is watching you these days... (Score:5, Informative)
It won't be long before people will know what we do, 24/7.
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Yeah. Running Ubuntu? It was probably Amazon that notified Tesla that he was modding his car.
Re:Everything is watching you these days... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Sorry I don't have votes to give you. This needs voted up. It's almost certainly what happened.
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Telnet? Are you kidding? (Score:2)
There is no excuse whatsoever for having telnetd running since you already have sshd. Telnet is a laughable security hole.
Telnet? (Score:2)
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It doesn't have to be 'telnetd'... Or rather, an interactive login port. It could be a non-interactive debug logging port that you connect to with telnet or netcat... I've done that sort of thing...
Knight Rider (Score:2)
No! Don't hack it! That's where KITT lives!!
Do they distribute the source? (Score:3, Insightful)
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There's a lot of GPL software in Ubuntu, starting with the Linux kernel. Does Tesla distribute the source code to Model S owners that ask?
I am not aware, yet. Have only see one owner be vocal in the past about trying to get it, but haven't . A few relevant threads. Lots of noise and general ignorance about Copyright in there, so prepare yourself.
Anyone want to get the source code for the Linux (etc.) in your car? [teslamotorsclub.com]
Running on Linux [teslamotorsclub.com]
Copyright (and Libel) Discussion [teslamotorsclub.com]
First thought... (Score:2)
Hmm April 1st has a long tail this year...
Next year I'm not going to believe anything until the middle of May.
Update story description **Attention Moderators** (Score:5, Informative)
I can see it now ... (Score:2)
"I set CONFIG_MAX_WATTS=5000 and rebuilt the kernel... Now my windows vibrate when I put on Metallica!"
"I set CONFIG_MP3_PLAYBACK_MULT=1.2 and I find myself driving faster to keep up with the music. I got 3 speeding tickets last week."
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Hand in your geek card. Your outcry should be to all the other Tesla owners "Stop driving while you are supposed to be fucking with shit!"
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Yes - to phone calling and texting, we can now add real-time network analysis of the car to the list of dangerous distractions of the electronic kind.
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Tesla uses can-bus like every other auto in the world with advanced controls.
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Can I mime Bitcoins with it?
A mime is a terrible thing to bitcoin.
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