A security researcher discovered a hidden unreleased function within the Waymo app that allowed her to show no matter characters she wished on the robotaxi’s prime show.
Jane Manchun Wong, a widely known security researcher, posted a picture on X on Saturday displaying the highest show of a Waymo automotive — formally referred to as “dome” — that included her X deal with and different strings of characters.
“I hacked my Waymo into displaying bizarre texts like empty string, ‘wongmjane,’ and emojis because the Automotive ID, pls don’t ban me or patch it @waymo lol,” she wrote.
Wong, who lives in San Francisco, advised information.killnetswitch that she was capable of customise the characters on the self-driving Jaguar I-Tempo dome by fidgeting with the Waymo cell app on her Android telephone as she waited for the robotaxi to point out up.
“The great outdated magic of messing round with the Waymo cell app. I suppose their servers didn’t validate the enter for the Automotive ID from non-employees,” mentioned Wong. “So no ‘jailbreaking’ or ‘rooting’ the automotive itself. All I did was change the Automotive ID to one thing past what it’d usually settle for. A reasonably innocent factor I suppose.”
Regardless of her pleas, it seems Waymo up to date the app to cease riders from customizing the dome like Wong did. On Tuesday, Wong posted an replace saying she was not capable of change the Automotive ID anymore.
Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp confirmed that Wong discovered a hidden function, and the corporate shut it down for normal customers like Wong.
“Jane recognized an unreleased function given her superior Android information,” Karp advised information.killnetswitch. “We’ve restricted entry to the dome show options.”
In 2020, Waymo introduced that it added shifting LEDs to its dome “in order that it could act as a mechanism for riders to determine the automobile day and night time and know which automobile is theirs when there could also be a couple of Waymo automotive ready.”
The dome can also be used to speak with pedestrians that the automotive is yielding to them, or to cyclists that the passenger is about to open the automotive’s door. And the corporate has additionally used the show for advertising and marketing functions.
