Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets

If the tool leaks or becomes available for sale online (Rodriguez himself has said he has no plans to release his tool), he said anyone could use it to jailbreak their own disk in a matter of minutes. “They just need to connect a cable and install new firmware, just like you jailbreak your iPhone,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez also pointed out that his hacking technique can be used not only by drivers who want to jailbreak their own license plates, but also by people who target unsuspecting license plate owners. Rodriguez warned that if a hacker (or a parking attendant or a car mechanic) could manage to remove the license plate and install their own firmware on it, they could secretly change their license plate number by programming the plate to connect to a server Hackers take control.

However, in addition to the physical access and time required to achieve the hack, license plate vandals would also need to overcome a feature of the Reviver license plate that sends a notification to the owner when the plate is separated from the vehicle. Rodriguez points out that this would require jamming the plate’s radio communications while simultaneously tampering with it, an additional problem that makes the attack less practical, though perhaps not impossible.

Rodriguez is not the first person to hack into the Reviver system. In 2022, security researcher Sam Curry discovered Vulnerabilities in corporate network infrastructure This allowed him to become the administrator of the back-end database, able to track or change license plates at will. However, unlike Rodriguez’s hardware hack, Reviver was able to quickly patch its network-based bug to thwart Curry’s technique.

Although Curry’s cyber hacking method was easier to implement than Rodriguez’s hardware hack before the Reviver patch, he said Rodriguez’s method may have real appeal to some illegal drivers. They may want to jailbreak their Reviver license plate or simply purchase a pre-jailbroken license plate online. “If you wanted to swap your license plate number like James Bond and drive at crazy speeds or whatever, you could change it for a few hours and then change it back without even having to pull into the parking lot,” Curry said. “Those who cause havoc on the roads could be involved.”

It is currently legal to purchase and register digital license plates in California and Arizona (and also in Michigan) allow them briefly), with more states considering legalizing it in the coming years. Rodriguez and Curry believe that as the program continues to roll out, license plate manufacturers, traffic regulators and law enforcement all need to be aware that any system that relies solely on license plates as identifiers may be vulnerable to digital license plate hacks , leading to potentially chaotic consequences.

“You should assume that people are going to make them angry,” Currie said. “People need to accept the impact.”

Updated December 16, 2024 at 12:48 pm ET: Clarification of Michigan’s policy on digital license plates.

Updated December 17, 2024 at 11:55 AM ET: After publishing, Reviver clarified that the vulnerable module in the company’s license plate does not have GPS. We have updated the story to reflect this new information.