CVE-2018-16806 — A Pektron Passive Keyless Entry and Start (PKES) system, as used on the Tesla Mo

A Pektron Passive Keyless Entry and Start (PKES) system, as used on the Tesla Model S and possibly other vehicles, relies on the DST40 cipher, which makes it easier for attackers to obtain access via an approach involving a 5.4 TB precomputation, followed by wake-frame reception

01What is this vulnerability?

A Pektron Passive Keyless Entry and Start (PKES) system, as used on the Tesla Model S and possibly other vehicles, relies on the DST40 cipher, which makes it easier for attackers to obtain access via an approach involving a 5.4 TB precomputation, followed by wake-frame reception and two challenge/response operations, to clone a key fob within a few seconds.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2018-09-10T23:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-05T10:32:54.092Z

09References

• www.esat.kuleuven.be — https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/fast-furious-and-insecure-passive-keyless-ent…