That $10,000 prize for the first team to hack a Tesla at the SyScan conference in Beijing may have already been won, and Tesla asks that they "act responsibly and in good faith."
The "hack" was pulled off by Qihoo, a Chinese internet security company that's one of the sponsors of the event, and the team was apparently able to remotely control the horn, door locks, headlights, and moonroof remotely while the Model S is in motion.
Qihoo refuses to disclose how it performed the hack and its posting on Weibo (China's version of Twitter) doesn't go into details. The company doesn't say if it had to physically tie into the Tesla or were able to control it remotely, and there was a lengthly list of error codes displayed, including a fault on the ABS and traction control, the disabling of the adaptive suspension and the energy recycling system. So a hackney hack, but they did have a sick sense of humor about it, saying (through Google translate):
Our safety performance Tesla recently conducted a series of tests and found that the certificate can be used to unlock the remote control of the vehicle, whistle, flash and so on. And can open the sunroof while driving the vehicle. Tesla owners recently to be careful when driving rain suddenly open sunroof, become a drowned rat.
Tesla told Bloomberg that it will take immediate action to fix any "legitimate vulnerability," and asked researchers to report any vulnerabilities to the automaker, a policy it's promoted in the past.