prebaked/blog

blog

My journey of learning to reverse engineer. I would like to leave the world a little better off than when I entered it.

blog's Issues

1: How I got here

Intro

For as long as I've known about Tesla, I have wanted to get a vehicle, turn it into a computer in which I can customize and have full access to. In 2021, I got my first model 3 (2019, single motor long range). I sold it in 2022 to prepare for becoming a father, and got my second model 3 in 2023 (2019, single motor standard range+).

At first, I wanted to learn how to enable various features such as FSD, premium audio (not even sure if this is possible), and get root for FreedomEV, hotspot, etc. I wanted to just find someone in my area that would do the work for me but unfortunately, these people are hard to find and the ones that are willing to do the work, charge an arm and a leg to do it. As a new father, I can't justify the cost of paying thousands, so I recognized the new reality - I would need to learn how to break into my Model 3 myself.

My goal in this blog is to catch up to my current knowledge and continue to follow my journey through getting root on my Tesla, enable the features I want to enable, disable Tesla data sharing, and explore the realm of possibilities with reverse engineering.

About me

I'm extremely private but what I can tell you is that I don't have any degrees and am simply excited about learning about what's going on in a Tesla vehicle.

If you'd like to contact me, you can message me on telegram at @lucernyx. A lot of what I will be writing will be founded on my current experience but I am more than willing

What I know so far

Thanks to Lewurm's phenomenal blog and greentheonly's selfless advice, I've learned the following:

• J21 (SPI) micro usb connector can be used to read bootloader on MCU startup
• ODIN has been used as an entrypoint numerous times in the past
• You can do cool things like setting up reverse proxy on your car once you have root, and connect a raspberry pi to J21 for consistent remote access to your car at a firmware and bootloader level
• Other than green's twitter archive and Lewurm's blog, little information exists online, especially in a centralized form
• You can throw a Tesla firmware image into a docker container and run ODIN ./opt/odin/odin --platform model_3 --fw-version 20.4.2 --log-level DEBUG --config-file ./opt/odin/config/factory.yaml start engine

What's next

• What's odin_server.hermes?
• Use a Tigard to read the SPI image on my donor MCU and attempt to modify it
• Connect with more people interested in the topic