Innovations can be very beneficial to society, but they can also bring more harm than good. Reports have surfaced that a 19-year-old hacker claims he’s hacked 25 Tesla cars across 13 different countries.
David Colombo, 19, is an IT specialist from Germany and has reportedly hacked Tesla’s remotely and flashed headlights, controlled radios, and even begin driving keyless. Colombo made his claims on Twitter, and the New York Post summarized several of his tweets. Here’s what they had to say:
“Yes, I potentially could unlock the doors and start driving the affected Tesla’s,” he tweeted. “No I can not intervene with someone driving (other than starting music at max volume or flashing lights) and I also can not drive these Tesla’s remotely.”
On Tuesday, Colombo tweeted that his hack was “not a vulnerability in Tesla’s infrastructure” but rather “it’s the owners faults.” On Monday, he had tweeted that “There seems to be no way to find the owners and report it to them.”
A German teen claims to have hacked 25 Tesla across 13 countrieshttps://t.co/GYdoFxdfuE
— Irish Times Business (@IrishTimesBiz) January 12, 2022
It’s quite terrifying knowing that a 19-year-old can hack autonomous vehicles, and it’s raising major concerns. CEO of Tesla Elon Musk has previously promised that he would work alongside regulators to keep driver’s data protected from hackers.
It’s estimated that by the year 2025 there will be over 470 million vehicles that will contain computerized databases. Just imagine if 470 million vehicles were all breached at once, it would cause complete chaos.
Besides Tesla raising security concerns, Musk has another company that has critiques concerned about its cyber security. Neuaralink, where Musk serves as the CEO, is a company that is developing a “computer to brain ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers”.
Neuralink aims to allow people that have neurological diseases to be able to control their electronic devices and computers without the use of their hands, but rather by their mind. Neuralink engineers shocked the world when they implanted a chip into a monkey who then was able to play the video game Pong with his mind. Take a look:
What if you could play video games with your brain? Thanks to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, this monkey can. pic.twitter.com/S3x7BkL2EO
— CNET (@CNET) January 8, 2022
After the successful monkey experience, Musk went to Twitter to tweet:
“First Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs.
The next stage would be enabling, for example, paraplegics”
Some are skeptical about Neuralink and believe that although Musk wants to use the technology for good, someone along the line will eventually use the technology for evil. Imagine if someone with a Neuralink was hacked, then the hacker would essentially have control of a human being. A hacker could make a wealthy person hand over their money, making it even easier to control elections by hacking a person’s brain and causing that person to donate to a campaign they normally wouldn’t support.
Although “brain hacking” sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, the tech is right before our eyes. There are some people with beautiful minds who want to use the technology for good, like helping paraplegics walk again. Sadly, there are also sadistic minds who are looking at the tech as a way to literally control a person like a robot.
As of right now, Musk is one of the good guys, so let’s hope his companies don’t get infiltrated with shady characters.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News