[Discussion] What would it take to selfhost some of the backend that Tesla's connect to?
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
The right to repair. It's going to require the ability to make changes to the software on the vehicle. At a minimum the ability to replace the public encryption keys used to communicate with the servers. The bootloader and software is probably locked behind signing keys; so you need to be able to disable or add your own keys. I doubt anyone has access to the full protocols used to communicate with the servers. So, the full technical standard need to be released (which is never going to happen) or reversed engineered through unencrypted traffic analysis and reverse engineering the software.
A good right to repair law could require some of that be releasable while the company is still active or all if the company goes belly up. IIRC there was a smaller EV company that went bankrupt and there was a concern that once the servers were shutdown the vehicles would be bricked. Not sure what happened in the end. In any case, cars as IOT is the stupidest idea ever created.
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If I had a Tesla and someone smart enough to hack into I wouldn't doubt I could probably figure out how they build their dashboards, they're most likely browser based or qt or something like it. It'd be too costly to do it in anything else and Id bet many spacex dashes are the same tech. But I ain't rich enough to get one of those things so someone else has to
They are browser based, their whole UI and much of the in car backend is a JavaScript.
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
Not in these next 4 years.
Afterwards, if judges still exist, you can try to force Tesla (with the help of judges) to allow your right to repair.
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
You can't
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You'd likely need all kinds of cryptographic keys to get anywhere with that. Tesla is unlikely to ever publish those, even if they go bankrupt.
On the upside: if you mod your car to get around all that, you'll probably be able to emulate old consoles on it and play pokemon games while driving.
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Some brainstorming from me:
- Ideally people do not buy more teslas
- An initial goal would be to use the vehicle without it phoning home. Would the TeslaMate project be sufficient for that?
- Long term, would it be possible to replace the software running on the car's console? Or would it be better to tear out the console and replace it with something else.
Alternatively, what would a recycling program look like?
Everything that polls Tesla data goes through (at lease negotiated access) Tesla servers.
That includes TesMate, TeslaFi, Tessie, etc.
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They are browser based, their whole UI and much of the in car backend is a JavaScript.
JavaScript
Ah, they're that kind of evil.
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You can't
Not that you aren't entitled to your opinion, but software running on a Tesla is, in many ways just as mallaible as code on a vacuum robot.
There are several challenges, but basically the protections stopping people from reading and writing firmware would need to be defeated.
I think there have been some software jailbreaks on earlier models already that have been patched, but software is complicated, it's hard be bug free.
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The right to repair. It's going to require the ability to make changes to the software on the vehicle. At a minimum the ability to replace the public encryption keys used to communicate with the servers. The bootloader and software is probably locked behind signing keys; so you need to be able to disable or add your own keys. I doubt anyone has access to the full protocols used to communicate with the servers. So, the full technical standard need to be released (which is never going to happen) or reversed engineered through unencrypted traffic analysis and reverse engineering the software.
A good right to repair law could require some of that be releasable while the company is still active or all if the company goes belly up. IIRC there was a smaller EV company that went bankrupt and there was a concern that once the servers were shutdown the vehicles would be bricked. Not sure what happened in the end. In any case, cars as IOT is the stupidest idea ever created.
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Just sell the car to a derby demolition show. We all win.
That's wasteful and dangerous
Harvest the beast for batteries and GPUs
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On the upside: if you mod your car to get around all that, you'll probably be able to emulate old consoles on it and play pokemon games while driving.
...But will it run DOOM?
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
If you bought a live service car you're probably shit out of luck
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That mentality is how we got here in the first place. A person should have a right to understand and repair everything happening in devices they own. Because they don't, we get stuck in the shitty situation where Elon Musk can unlock any Tesla he pleases and I can't refuse to send my data to him. Or any other car manufacturer. Or tractor manufacturer. Or IoT manufacturer.
Mixed feelings on this. Yeah, you buy it you should own it. But if your ability to fuck with a two-ton rolling death machine puts my ass at risk, we've git a fucking problem.
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I saw this article earlier:
Tesla 'going bankrupt' is endpoint of protests, says local organizer
In the spirit of right to repair, self-hosting, giving a second life to old devices, and limiting data collection by car companies:
- What are some considerations?
- Are there any projects worth keeping an eye on?
An example that came to mind was Valetudo, which is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. Some robot vacuums are easy to install this on, and others require more invasive modifications.
What I've found so far:
probabaly full replacement of the motor controller and user facing hardware. basically a diy ev conversion using tesla motors but converting the tesla itself. you would lose features but they would be lost regardless.
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Mixed feelings on this. Yeah, you buy it you should own it. But if your ability to fuck with a two-ton rolling death machine puts my ass at risk, we've git a fucking problem.
I have some bad news for you - any random idiot with a driver's license and a two-ton death machine already puts your ass at risk, all the time. We call it "traffic" because we've just gotten used to it
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I have some bad news for you - any random idiot with a driver's license and a two-ton death machine already puts your ass at risk, all the time. We call it "traffic" because we've just gotten used to it
It is not comparable, not even by far.
Assuming your are not a psycho, to safely drive a car is orders of magnitude (in plural) easier than modifying the Sw in a safe and deterministic way.
It is not only that bad people exists, it is about that making a small mistake can kill you
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That mentality is how we got here in the first place. A person should have a right to understand and repair everything happening in devices they own. Because they don't, we get stuck in the shitty situation where Elon Musk can unlock any Tesla he pleases and I can't refuse to send my data to him. Or any other car manufacturer. Or tractor manufacturer. Or IoT manufacturer.
Then don't buy tesla, or force legislation about introducing such feature.
But make yourself a favor and don't play Russian roulette with something that you can not understandbecause there are not data available.
And for final tip, if you really cares about that then enforce the fsf (fsf.org)
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I have some bad news for you - any random idiot with a driver's license and a two-ton death machine already puts your ass at risk, all the time. We call it "traffic" because we've just gotten used to it
I'm talking 'I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot' or 'I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo' or 'I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race' or...
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Assuming that Tesla goes bankrupt, actually shuts down forever, and shuts its servers down…
At a minimum someone would have to find out where the software sends and receives data from. Then you’d have to reverse engineer the software to control the vehicles.
Then you’d have to reprogram the software to send to your C&C server. I don’t think it would really take all that much to host that… it’s getting there that’s difficult.
Yeah it'd be a LOT of constant wireshark and reverse engineering to figure out every API it calls. Then probably something in the middle to sit on the host, need to figure out https certs since you'd be spoofing the host, and of course making sure you get the responses absolutely correct.
Not impossible, but it's not trivial anymore either.
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I'm talking 'I disabled the awareness requirement of autopilot' or 'I fucked with the object detection and here goes my beta test yolo' or 'I added a button to disable all the lights so I can covertly street race' or...
Imagine thinking Tesla has all-that-much in place to prevent those things in a stock configuration. Full-stop, any self-driving is one of the first features anyone trying to disconnect their cars from Tesla servers would lose outright.
