A former Google employee has joined Tesla’s ranks, and he couldn’t have come at a better time. Chris Evans used to be the head of Project Zero, Google’s personal team of hackers that existed solely to find dangerous vulnerabilities in software, not just Google’s software either, but anyone’s. Tesla’s decision to hire him comes shortly after it was revealed that the Model S can actually be hacked.
Chris Evans was until recently the head of Google’s Project Zero, a team of hackers employed full-time by Google to find zero-day vulnerabilities on not only their own products, but any software that could affect Google’s users. Today, Evans announced that he will soon join Tesla Motors to lead its security team. Evans announced the move just a day after two security researchers, Kevin Mahaffey and Marc Rogers, revealed that they managed to hack a Tesla Model S by ripping off the dashboard, connecting a laptop and sending a software command to start the car – basically presenting an alternative to “hot-wiring” the vehicle. They also managed to install a trojan, while having physical access to the car, to then shutdown the electric motor remotely. The good news is that both hacks require physical access to the vehicle, and the great news is that Tesla already pushed OTA software updates to its fleet to fix the issues.
