Why Tesla is offering a new Model 3 to a hacker

In a bid to ramp up its security, Tesla has announced it will give away a Model 3 electric car to anyone who succeeds in hacking into its systems.

The Elon Musk-backed carmaker has teamed up with Vancouver’s Pwn2Own cyber security contest to challenge up-and-coming hackers to find vulnerabilities in the budget EV, Engadget reports. The competition will run from 20 to 22 March.

The initiative reflects a growing trend. Aware that their systems are not always as secure as they’d like, many tech companies are now looking to budding programmers to crack their products and expose major security flaws.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

By inviting contestants at the Pwn2Own event to hack into the Model 3, which costs $35,000 (£27,200) in the US, and share their discoveries, Tesla will be able to discover and rectify flaws in its cheapest model. This will potentially remove the need to finance a team of cyber security experts.

The winning contestant will be given a brand new Model 3 as part of a generous prize pot totalling about $900,000 (£701,000), says Ars Technica.

Speaking at the Vancouver-based event, David Lau, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle software, said the company’s work with the cyber research community was “invaluable”.

“We look forward to learning about, and rewarding, great work in Pwn2Own so that we can continue to improve our products and our approach to designing inherently secure systems”, he said.

This isn’t the first time Tesla has called on the hacking community to find vulnerabilities in its cars.

According to The Verge, the company has operated a “bug bounty program” since 2014, encouraging cyber security experts to find flaws in its cars in exchange for payments running into tens of thousands of dollars.

The process has since been adopted by General Motors and the Fiat Chrysler Association, the news site adds.