Three German IT experts have managed to crack the autopilot of Tesla cars. This exposed the car manufacturer’s trade secrets.

Can you hack the autopilot in a Tesla car? Three doctoral students from the University of Berlin put it to the test. They managed to crack the car’s circuit board and made some interesting discoveries. The tools required for this cost them six hundred euros, writes the German news media t3n.

The experiment shows that the circuit board reveals a car’s biggest secrets. The aspiring engineers found, among other things, Tesla business secrets. The board stores the data that your car sends back to Tesla’s computers to train Autopilot. However, private data from the previous owner could also be found on the board, as well as metadata that revealed GPS locations.

No reason to panic

If you own a Tesla car, you don’t have to worry right away. Without physical access to the board, it is not possible to retrieve the metadata about your driving history, apart from the specialized equipment required to do so. This could pose a potential problem for Tesla. Theoretically, competitors could obtain valuable data about how the autopilot works for just six hundred euros.

Tesla uses a high level of security to protect its cars from common attack methods, but it’s certainly not the first time hackers have found a loophole. Luckily, they are often hobbyists who see cracking the cars as a fun challenge. But security gaps in Tesla cars can have very serious consequences for drivers. Last year, researchers discovered how thieves could use NFC technology to activate the digital key on the owner’s smartphone to open a car.