Hackers can crack digital license plates to make others pay tolls and tickets

If this tool leaks or is sold online — Rodriguez himself says he has no plans to publish his tool — he says anyone could use it to jailbreak their dialpad in a matter of minutes. “They just need to plug in a cable and install the new firmware, just like you would jailbreak your iPhone,” Rodriguez says.

Rodriguez also points out that his hacking method could be used not only by a driver who wants to jailbreak their license plate, but also by someone unwittingly targeting the license plate owner as well. Rodriguez warns that if a hacker — or a parking valet or auto mechanic — can remove a license plate and install their own firmware on it, they could surreptitiously track a driver or even change their license plate number over the Internet by programming the plate to communicate with the server that controls In it the intruder.

In addition to the physical access and time needed to perform this hack, a license plate vandal would also need to overcome the Reviver plates feature that sends a notification to the owner when they are disconnected from the vehicle. Rodriguez points out that this would require jamming the board’s wireless communications while tampering with it, an additional wrinkle that makes the attack less practical, though perhaps not impossible.

Rodriguez is not the first to hack into Reviver’s systems. In 2022, security researcher Sam Curry discovered Weaknesses in the company’s web infrastructure This allowed him to make himself an administrator in its back-end database, with the ability to track or change license plates at will. Unlike the Rodriguez hardware hack, Reviver was able to quickly patch web-based bugs to prevent Curry’s technique.

Although Curry’s method for hacking the web was much easier before the Reviver patch than hacking Rodriguez’s devices, he says Rodriguez’s method is likely to have real appeal for some illegal drivers, who might want to jailbreak their Reviver plates or simply purchase plates. Already jailbroken connected. “If you wanted to change your license plate number, James Bond style, and then drive at crazy speeds or something, you could change it for a few hours and then change it again without having to stop in a parking garage,” Curry says. “People who cause chaos on the road might be interested in this.”

Purchasing and registering digital license plates is currently legal in California and Arizona (also Michigan). He allowed them briefly), with many states considering legalizing it in the coming years. As this rollout continues, Rodriguez and Curry argue that license plate makers, public transit regulators, and law enforcement all need to realize that any system that relies solely on license plates as an identifier could be vulnerable to digital license plate hacking — with potentially chaotic consequences.

“You have to assume people are going to mess with them,” Carey says. “People need to accept the implications of that.”

Updated at 12:48 PM EDT, December 16, 2024: Michigan policy on digital license plates clarified.