Researchers Trick Tesla’s Autopilot to Steer Into Oncoming Traffic

Researchers have found a way to trick the Enhanced Autopilot of a Tesla Model S 75 to drive into oncoming traffic, Ars Technica reports. Tencent’s Keen Security Lab researchers reportedly found that tricking the car into the opposite lane didn’t require hacking, but only “carefully affixing three stickers to the road.” The stickers reportedly tricked the car into thinking that a lane was shifting to the left, so the car would shift left into the opposite lane. “Tesla autopilot module’s lane recognition function has a good robustness in an ordinary external environment (no strong light, rain, snow, sand and dust interference), but it still doesn’t handle the situation correctly in our test scenario,” the researchers wrote in their report. “This kind of attack is simple to deploy, and the materials are easy to obtain.” The Keen Security Lab also reportedly found that the Tesla’s autowiper system could be tricked into turning on even when it wasn’t raining by feeding “images directly into the system” to trick it. The researchers warned that such a vulnerability could eventually be exploited by others, who could display an “adversarial image” on a road sign or another car to mislead the autopilot car. In a statement, Tesla wrote that the scenarios replicated by researchers were not “realistic” concerns for its drivers—who would not be in environments that were “artificially altered” to mislead the autopilot system. The company also noted that a driver could “easily override Autopilot at any time” and should “always be prepared to do so.”