Unpatchable AMD Chip Flaw Unlocks Paid Tesla Feature Upgrades
Unpatchable AMD Chip Flaw Unlocks Paid Tesla Feature Upgrades
Sorry Elon, but this appears to be unpatchable.
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You still have to buy a Tesla. You're acting like it's a win to control the software that is on the hardware that you own. It's sad that it is.
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Locked down software is shit don't get me wrong, but being able to jailbreak it feels so good.
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It's worth noting our regular cars have locked down ECU. I had to pay good money to be able to get around it. But I agree it's not great overall and isn't headed in a promising direction.
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Even my 2005 Audi A6 had software locked features.
Some were probably tuned for different markets, like lock confirmation beep, but others were added as later model year updates like visualization of parking sensors which, IIRC, was added with the 2006 model year update.
Now, granted, the Audi dealer that had serviced my car prior to my ownership never bothered to install firmware updates, but even when I did it was off by default.
To update I needed to flash new firmware onto the ECU’s using 3 CD’s with various updates while the car was hooked up to a charger. The whole thing took about 3 hours.
And then I could use a third party diagnostic tool (VCDS) to set and enable the visualization of the parking sensors. Honestly can’t remember if it actually worked, but at least I got other features made available due to the software updates.
The problem, IMO, is the trend towards never owning anything - not software gated features.
And that trend is certainly negative.
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You would need to be crazy to apply a voltage regulation hack to the CPU that they don't sell spare parts if something goes wrong. Risking bricking a $50000 car to unlock the $300 heated seats?
And while the root access is unpatchable, because the car is always connected to internet and always sharing too much telemetry to their servers, it would be trivial for them to add an additional server side check to see if some feature has been unlocked without paying.