A security researcher said flaws in a carmaker’s online dealership portal exposed the private information and vehicle data of its customers, and could have allowed hackers to remotely break into any of its customers’ vehicles.
Eaton Zveare, who works as a security researcher at software delivery company Harness, told TechCrunch the flaw he discovered allowed the creation of an admin account that granted “unfettered access” to the unnamed carmaker’s centralized web portal.
With this access, a malicious hacker could have viewed the personal and financial data of the carmaker’s customers, track vehicles, and enroll customers in features that allow owners — or the hackers — control some of their car’s functions from anywhere.
Zveare said he doesn’t plan on naming the vendor, but said it was a widely known automaker with several popular sub-brands.
In an interview with TechCrunch ahead of his talk at the Def Con security conference in Las Vegas on Sunday, Zveare said the bugs put a spotlight on the security of these dealership systems, which grant their employees and associates broad access to customer and vehicle information.
Zveare, who has found bugs in carmakers’ customer systems and vehicle management systems before, found the flaw earlier this year as part of a weekend project, he told TechCrunch.
He said while the security flaws in the portal’s login system was a challenge to find, once he found it, the bugs let him bypass the login mechanism altogether by permitting him to create a new “national admin” account.
The flaws were problematic because the buggy code loaded in the user’s browser when opening the portal’s login page, allowing the user — in this case, Zveare — to modify the code to bypass the login security checks. Zveare told TechCrunch that the carmaker found no evidence of past exploitation, suggesting he was the first to find it and report it to the carmaker.
When logged in, the account granted access to more than 1,000 of the carmakers’ dealers across …