One woman has found the perfect solution for not losing her car keys: she implanted her key in her arm.
Software engineer Amie DD took the car-shaped key fob that Tesla gives owners to unlock their vehicle, and implanted part of it in her arm, which allows her to open her Tesla with her body rather than a traditional key.
She documented the entire process in a video as well as on the site Hackaday, you can get an excellent look at the step-by-step process there.
Essentially she took the valet card for her Tesla Model 3 and removed the chip from the physical card that allows the car to be unlocked. Then, with the help of a body-modification studio and a gentleman named Pineapple, she was able to implant that card into her forearm.
In order to make it safe, she had the card encased in biopolymer. She told The Verge that the hack works; however, her arm is still swollen where the implant was placed, which makes it so she needs to be very close to the vehicle for it to work.
I’ll record it and post it when I’m home from @defcon next week!! pic.twitter.com/qMo71MSycM
— Amie DD (@amiedoubleD) August 11, 2019
Amie says she’s ordered two more keys and plans to have a Tesla service technician come out to her home and show her how he pairs the keys to her vehicle.
Amie’s hack isn’t the only Tesla hack we’ve come across this week. Security researcher Truman Kain debuted his Surveillance Detection Scout at Defcon this year.
Kain’s hack essentially transforms the Model 3 into a surveillance bot that can spot, track, and store license plates as well as faces that it encounters.
To make it work, he essentially hacked into the dashboard of the Tesla Model S using the USB port on the dashboard and made it so the vehicle’s built-in cameras were being used as a surveillance system rather than to just detect the presence of nearby vehicles.
“It’s meant to be another set of eyes, to help out and tell you it’s seen a license plate following you over multiple days or even multiple turns of a single trip.”
Of course, there’s definitely a risk that the car following you every day might just be a neighbor with a similar work schedule.
