Tesla media units are full of owner's private data even after a factory reset
insideevs.com
insideevs.com
I'm purely speculating here but imagine if every team (Calendar, Spotify Integration, Netflix Integration, WiFi, etc) was writing their own storage code; the MCU is a glorified Ubuntu distro so different teams decide to scatter files all all over the place or re-use existing Linux services (e.g. WiFi credential storage). Particularly if they're doing the smart thing and giving each app/components its own Linux user/UID.
Then the inevitable question becomes: How do you wrangle it all for a reset? That's where a storage API comes into play, or you just "nuke the entire thing from orbit" and overwrite the running partition using some stored image using a pre-boot environment but even then the data might not be removed from the physical storage chips.
But in an embedded context, I would speculate that a single unencrypted filesystem is nice for debugging and the like.
Given the anecdotes of "in the early days we had to parallel ssh into individual cars to apply patches", I could imagine this just fell by the wayside in the name of "ship faster".
This also makes the vehicle almost impossible to brick through damage to system data (worst case: remove drive and reimage) and allows the new owner to do the same thing to be assured that the vehicle is not harboring malware.
Also, why trust the hardware when you don’t need to? Encrypt the volume from the get go, throw away the key when you want to keep the store, but destroy the data, and you make sure the key didn’t get leaked elsewhere.
Thinking of that: it would be useful to have a static code analyzer that could tell you, for example, whether the result of “getEncryptionKey” might end up in a call to “println”, “log”, or “write”. Do these exist?
TLDR: I'm going to wait until I hear they have good data hygiene before I let them swap out my computer.
The problem is the lack of consistency. The core charge communicated can vary wildly between locations and staff performing the work, and some owners are told the part is restricted and no return is possible. In these cases, legal complaints with your state’s Attorney General might improvise Tesla’s consistency across the org. With other issues, I’ve had good luck with certified letters to Tesla’s legal service address, YMMV.