Earlier in the chapter, we looked at how researchers at UC San Diego and the University
of Washington were able to exploit a condition in which a car answered incoming phone calls
instead of connecting outbound to a trusted destination. The use of OpenVPN by Tesla to ini-
tiate an outbound connection to a known service is more secure, yet this area is open to fur-
ther research, and a detailed analysis of the configuration may reveal further security and pri-
vacy issues. The outgoing connection using OpenVPN can be configured using preshared
keys, a username and password, or certificates. It will be interesting to see where in the inter-
nal filesystem this information is located. Once this information is obtained, a potential
intruder could test the internal network infrastructure of the OpenVPN endpoint and also the
integrity of how software updates are performed.
In addition to 3G and WiFi connectivity, the Model S has a 4-pin connector on the left
side of the dashboard: a M12 to RJ45 adapter can be used to connect a laptop to this port.
Users on the Tesla Motors Club forum have reported various types of information about the
internal network after having plugged into it, as shown in Figure 6-13.
FIGURE 6-13. Forum discussion about Tesla Model S internal network
Upon scanning the internal network after connecting through the RJ45 adapter, the fol-
lowing IP addresses and services were found to exist in the Model S:
THE TESLA MODEL S 183