Researchers demonstrated a way to compromise a Tesla Model 3’s infotainment computer over Wi-Fi without anyone touching the car. A drone carried the Wi-Fi equipment close to a parked vehicle; the demonstration did not show an attacker taking control of the car’s driving. The vulnerability was reported patched in October 2020, so TBONE is a historical security case—not evidence of a current attack against updated Teslas.
What was the Tesla TBONE exploit?
TBONE was a 2020 security demonstration by Ralf-Philipp Weinmann and Benedikt Schmotzle of Comsecuris. Their write-up, dated October 16, 2020, described a planned Pwn2Own 2020 attempt against the infotainment computer, known as the CID, in a Tesla Model 3. Pwn2Own was cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the researchers later reported the issue to Tesla through its bug bounty program.
The attack combined two vulnerabilities in ConnMan, software used for network connections: a stack overflow in its DNS forwarder and a stack information leak in its DHCP component. Together, the flaws enabled remote code execution in the infotainment system over Wi-Fi, without driver interaction. The authors noted that relevant kernel modules were signed, so controlling ConnMan did not immediately provide root access. The TBONE write-up (a Scribd reproduction) describes the research and its technical boundaries.
How did the drone fit into the attack?
The drone was a way to bring Wi-Fi equipment near a parked Tesla, not a means of attacking it over the public internet. A 2021 report by Denham Sadler for the Australian Computer Society’s Information Age said the demonstration used a drone carrying a Wi-Fi dongle at a distance of up to 100 metres from the car. “Remote” in this story means wireless and without physical interaction at the vehicle—not an attacker connecting from anywhere online.
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The researchers said, “We did not want to weaponise this exploit into a worm.” That distinction matters: the reported setup depended on being close enough to target the vehicle’s Wi-Fi environment. The report does not establish that the attack could spread between cars or be launched from an arbitrary internet connection. Information Age’s account of the demonstration provides the reported drone distance and context.
What could the researchers do—and could they drive the car?
The demonstration reached the infotainment computer and showed access to some vehicle functions. The TBONE authors wrote: “For demonstration purposes, we shut down the firewall and send a message to the gateway to open the charge port of the car.” The Information Age report also described interference with the console and the ability to open doors. It attributed a broader list of possible functions to the researchers, including changing seat positions and steering or acceleration modes; those reported capabilities should not be mistaken for a demonstration of driving the vehicle.
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No: the reporting explicitly says the exploit did not let an attacker drive the Tesla. Compromising infotainment and sending certain messages to vehicle systems is not the same as taking control of steering, acceleration, or a moving car. The published demonstration supports claims about infotainment access and specific ancillary actions, not a claim that the researchers remotely drove the vehicle.
Was the drone hack patched?
The 2021 Information Age report says Tesla patched the vulnerability through an update in October 2020 and reportedly stopped using ConnMan. These are historical remediation details reported at the time, not a current audit of every Tesla model year, region, or software configuration. The available reporting does not establish how many vehicles were affected or provide a fleet-wide breakdown.
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Accordingly, TBONE should not be presented as an unpatched threat against current Teslas. Nor does the historical patch report establish the security state of every vehicle today; it records what was reported about this particular issue and its remediation.
How should security researchers report a Tesla vulnerability today?
Tesla’s Product Security policy, accessed October 4, 2026, directs vehicle and product vulnerability reports to VulnerabilityReporting@tesla.com. For sensitive reports, Tesla provides a PGP key on that page. Bugcrowd is identified as a platform Tesla uses for rewarding issues.
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The policy asks researchers to provide enough detail for Tesla to reproduce and validate a finding, avoid privacy violations and service disruption, and allow reasonable time for a fix before public disclosure. Its safety and authorization requirements include:
- “Alter only vehicles that you own or have permission to access.”
- Do not compromise vehicle safety.
- Vehicle research is limited to specified security mechanisms in infotainment, gateway, Tesla-developed ECU, and energy products.
- Researchers can request pre-approval and register a research vehicle under the policy.
For vulnerabilities involving functionality not resident on a research-registered vehicle, the policy specifies a 168-hour (seven-day) reporting deadline. That is a policy requirement, not an incident statistic; researchers should check Tesla’s page for the current terms before testing.
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How does TBONE differ from later Tesla wireless research?
A separate 2026 Northeastern University repository describes a black-box study of LTE connectivity in Tesla Model 3 and Cybertruck vehicles. Its authors specify local wireless adversary assumptions and say their findings do not demonstrate remote code execution, CAN-bus access, or takeover of driving functions. That study is distinct from TBONE and should not be treated as evidence that the 2020 exploit remains usable or that the later work reproduced its capabilities. The Signal-Intelligence-Laboratory repository describes that separate study.
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