Hackers crack Tesla Model 3 in competition, Tesla gives them the car

A group of hackers managed to crack a Tesla Model 3 as part of a hacking competition and Tesla gave them the car for exposing the vulnerability. The automaker made a Model 3 available to hackers in order for them to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the vehicle’s system.

The event happened in Vancouver this week and a team of two hackers managed to find an exploit on the last day of competition.

David Lau, Vice President of Vehicle Software at Tesla, commented on their effort:

“We develop our cars with the highest standards of safety in every respect, and our work with the security research community is invaluable to us. Since launching our bug bounty program in 2014 – the first to include a connected consumer vehicle – we have continuously increased our investments into partnerships with security researchers to ensure that all Tesla owners constantly benefit from the brightest minds in the community. We look forward to learning about, and rewarding, great work in Pwn2Own so that we can continue to improve our products and our approach to designing inherently secure systems.”

Tesla has also been fairly quick to fix vulnerabilities exposed by white hat hackers.