Hackers conquer Tesla’s in-car web browser and win a Model 3

By Kirsten Korosec

A pair of security researchers dominated Pwn2Own, the annual high-profile hacking contest, taking home $375,000 in prizes including a Tesla Model 3 — their reward for successfully exposing a vulnerability in the electric vehicle’s infotainment system.

Tesla handed over its new Model 3 sedan to Pwn2Own this year, the first time a car has been included in the competition. Pwn2Own is in its 12th year and run by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative. ZDI has awarded more than $4 million over the lifetime of the program.

The pair of hackers Richard Zhu and Amat Cam, known as team Fluoroacetate, “thrilled the assembled crowd” as they entered the vehicle, according to ZDI, which noted that after a few minutes of setup, they successfully demonstrated their research on the Model 3 internet browser.

The pair used a JIT bug in the renderer to display their message — and won the prize, which included the car itself. In the most simple terms, a JIT, or just-in-time bug, bypasses memory randomization data that normally would keep secrets protected.

Tesla told TechCrunch it will release a software update to fix the vulnerability discovered by the …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

Tesla’s customer referral program is back weeks after it was killed off

By Kirsten Korosec

Tesla killed off its customer referral program way back on Feb. 1, 2019 because the popular program was getting too costly to maintain. But now, less than two months later, Tesla is bringing it back with new incentives aimed at rewarding its customers, and bringing in new ones.

Tesla’s customer referral program had offered a bevy of incentives, including six months of free charging at Supercharger stations, launching a chosen photo into deep space orbit, VIP invitations, and even free Roadsters. The prizes, CEO Elon Musk said at the time, were beginning to add cost to its vehicles. In short: incentives to keep existing customers engaged and drive new sales were cutting into the company’s margins.

Tesla announced Thursday it would introduce a new referral program, a decision that was driven, in part, by customer feedback.

“While our previous Referral Program was very successful, it came …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

Former Oath CEO Tim Armstrong is exiting Verizon with a payout worth more than $60 million

By Catherine Shu

Tim Armstrong will leave Verizon Communications with an awards and benefits package worth more than $60 million. The Wall Street Journal calculated the total amount based on a securities filing from last Monday by combining Armstrong’s compensation in 2018, severance and a special incentive package he was given by Verizon when it acquired AOL in 2015. Armstrong was head of Oath (now called Verizon Media), which took a write down of $4.5 billion last year and laid off seven percent of its workforce as it struggled to compete with other digital media companies.

Oath, the company’s digital media unit, was created in 2017 by merging AOL and Yahoo, two companies acquired by Verizon Communications. (Disclosure: TechCrunch was part of AOL, then Oath and now Verizon Media).

Verizon Communications announced Oath’s $4.5 billion after-tax write down at the end of last year. It said the sum, which basically cancelled out the benefits of the merger, was due to increased competition in digital advertising and other market pressures last year had resulted in lower-than-expected 2018 results and that it expected …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

Lyft’s imminent IPO could value the company at $23B

By Kate Clark

Ridehailing firm Lyft will make its Nasdaq debut as early as next week at a valuation of up to $23 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. The business will reportedly price its shares at between $62 and $68 apiece, raising roughly $2 billion in the process.

With a $600 million financing, Lyft was valued at $15.1 billion in June.

Lyft filed paperwork for an initial public offering in December, mere hours before its competitor Uber did the same. The car-sharing behemoths have been in a race to the public markets, igniting a pricing war ahead of their respected IPOs in a big to impress investors.

Uber’s IPO may top $120 billion, though others have more modestly pegged its initial market cap at around $90 billion. Uber has not made its S-1 paperwork public but is expected to launch its IPO in April.

Lyft has not officially priced its shares. Its S-1 filing indicated a $100 million IPO fundraise, which is typically a placeholder amount for companies preparing for a float. Lyft’s IPO roadshow, or the final stage ahead of an IPO, begins Monday.

San Francisco-based Lyft has raised …read more

Source: Tech Crunch