Small Stickers on the Ground Tricked Tesla Autopilot Into Steering Into Opposing Traffic Lane

Cory Doctorow, writing at Boing Boing:

Researchers from Tencent Keen Security Lab have published a report detailing their successful attacks on Tesla firmware, including remote control over the steering, and an adversarial example attack on the autopilot that confuses the car into driving into the oncoming traffic lane.

The researchers used an attack chain that they disclosed to Tesla, and which Tesla now claims has been eliminated with recent patches.

Regular autonomous driving, in honest non-adversarial conditions, is a hard problem to solve. But these sort of “What if someone maliciously tries to screw with the autonomous system?” scenarios are terrifying.

★ Monday, 1 April 2019