Tesla Hit a Road Bump in the Cloud

Becoming a household name by pioneering and being a leader in the electric vehicle industry, Tesla has expanded its horizons in manufacturing and selling battery and solar panel technology. Tesla, a tech pioneer, is dedicated in the race to create and market autonomous cars. What’s the next step for them? There is deep interest in artificial intelligence, so much so that the business’ founder and CEO Elon Musk publicly revealed the company’s work on creating its own AI hardware.

Since Tesla has already optimized its territory in the tech world, it is a given that they are currently utilizing the cloud and AI for autonomous driving capabilities.”Thinking algorithms” for autopilot software is becoming more developed that soon Elon Musk’s cars will be fully self driving. What are the repercussions of such advanced technology? There already has been one reported fatal crash from the use of Tesla’s self driving technology. Whether autopilot is engaged or not, Tesla vehicles all send data to the cloud. A couple years ago, there was an incident where there was overheating causing issues in the engine’s operation. To fix the issue, a software was launched to patch up the problem. As advancements to technology increase, there are more opportunities for setbacks. But without those setbacks, there would be no growth. Other threats to Tesla include hackers. Like all cloud users, Tesla faces the risks from cybersecurity.

Not surprisingly, Tesla had already experienced a breach in their Amazon cloud account. It is unclear whether it was one hacker or a group of hackers, but according to security researchers, the hack was used to “mine” cryptocurrency while consequently exposing proprietary data. It was discovered that Tesla’s credentials were found on an unsecured admin console without password protection. Through Tesla’s environment, hackers were able to run scripts that allowed them to mine digital coins at Tesla’s expense. To hide their tracks, the thieves reduced CPU usage and masked their Internet addresses behind content delivery services.

Tesla is not alone in those who fell victim to hackers. Uber also recently experienced a breach that exposed 57 million account holder data. Hackers were able to gain access to data of Uber’s Amazon cloud accounts when they left it open on a code-sharing website called Github. Although it is inevitable that a disaster like a compromised cloud will occur, but it is important how companies publicly announce their misfortune. For Uber, they fell into hot water when they failed to promptly report their breach that involved millions of their customers.

Luckily for Tesla, they reported that the impact had no effect on customer privacy, vehicle safety, or security in any way. However, it brings the question of whether consumers would be safe if a hacker’s intention was to hijack the cloud that controlled their autonomous cars. Security continues to be a major concern regarding cloud computing. Especially when cloud infrastructure becomes more integrated in everyday life activities, security and safety becomes a major player in whether products and services will be successful. Efforts are continuous in ensuring consumers are protected while also maintaining business integrity.