Tesla now has permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to begin testing the resilience of its robotaxis against cellular hacking.
The company aims to “perform short-term testing of cellular vulnerabilities…and simulate [radio frequency] attacks on the vehicles to understand their resiliency to such attacks by malicious actors,” according to the application. The company needs a permit because these signals are “outside Tesla’s normal operational license area,” Tesla says.
The FCC’s approval notice to Tesla says it must coordinate with spectrum owners if it wants to tap into their spectrum “within 50 miles of the contours of the testing area.” That includes Verizon’s 700MHz lower band and C-band and AT&T’s Wireless Communications Service (WCS) spectrum.
The FCC also notes that, “The use of a phone jammer, GPS blocker, or other signal jamming device designed to intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications is a violation of federal law under The Communications Act of 1934.”
Tesla filed for temporary access, or “special temporary authority” (STA), on June 17. That’s five days before its June 22 robotaxi launch, in which the company unleashed 10 self-driving Model Y electric cars on the streets of Austin, Texas.
“With autonomous driving pending, we wish to test and simulate [radio frequency] attacks on the vehicles to understand their resiliency to such attacks by malicious actors,” the application says.
Tesla listed the “requested period of operation” as June 20 to Aug. 20. Even though the FCC didn’t grant the company permission until July 18, its approval letter backdates authorization to “June 20, 2025,” and says it “will expire at 3 a.m. EST August 21.”
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Waymo robotaxis are also operating on the streets of Austin and Atlanta via a partnership with Uber. It does not appear that the company has requested a hacking-related STA of its own. Its driving software operates entirely on-board with no cell signal required, LightReading reports.
As Mike Dano, Lead Industry Analyst at Ookla, noted on LinkedIn, “it looks like [Tesla is] starting to worry about cellular attacks and hacks.” Remote car hacks have been a concern for years, with or without a human behind the wheel, and bad actors are constantly looking for new ways to do it. At last year’s Black Hat hacking conference, for example, a team from Computest Security turned their hacking skills to EVs.
Disclosure: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company.
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About Emily Forlini
Senior Reporter
