Tesla Autopilot gets tricked into accelerating from 35 to 85 mph with modified speed limit sign

adversarial-attacksautonomous-vehiclescomputer-visionai-safety

Abstraction: Sticker on speed sign fools Tesla Autopilot MobilEye camera into speeding

Key points:

McAfee Advanced Threat Research used a small sticker-based modification to a 35-mph speed limit sign to cause Tesla's first-generation Autopilot to accelerate to 85 mph
The attack targeted MobilEye's camera system, deployed in over 40 million vehicles including first-gen Tesla Autopilot
When misclassification succeeded, TACC (Traffic-Aware Cruise Control) accelerated 100% of the time — no false negatives
The modification was imperceptible to human drivers who could still read 35 mph correctly
McAfee disclosed to Tesla (Sept 2019) and MobilEye (Oct 2019); neither expressed plans to fix the issue on existing platforms; MobilEye noted newer versions address these cases
Fixing the vulnerability requires a fundamentally better image recognition system, not just a software patch

Connections: Tesla · Mcafee · Mobileye · Adversarial Attacks · Autonomous Vehicles · AI Safety