Tesla Telematics Control Unit (TCU) firmware prior to v2025.14 contains an authentication bypass vulnerability. The TCU runs the Android Debug Bridge (adbd) as root and, despite a “lockdown” check that disables adb shell, still permits adb push/pull and adb forward. Because adbd is privileged and the device’s USB port is exposed externally, an attacker with physical access can write an arbitrary file to a writable location and then overwrite the kernel’s uevent_helper or /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug entries via ADB, causing the script to be executed with root privileges.
Published: 2025-10-07
Updated: 2026-04-15
Base Score: 7.2
Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
Severity: High
Base Score: 6.8
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity: Medium
Base Score: 8.6
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
Severity: High
EPSS: 0.00041