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Meet Amat Cama, the Senegalese cyber security consultant who hacked into a Tesla Model 3

At a recent hacking event, Senegalese-born Amat Cama and his teammate successfully exposed a weakness in Tesla Model 3’s infotainment system.

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Amat Cama is an independent security researcher based in Senegal. This cyber security consultant and researcher recently teamed up with Richard Zhu in an international hacking competition. The two formed a team, which they named Fluoroacetate, and entered the Pwn2Own hacking event. This contest is run by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) and entrants were given the task of exposing Tesla’s vulnerability.

Tesla’s Model 3 and other products that included VirtualBox, Microsoft Office 36 and Google Chrome were some of the targets of hackers. The contest brought together researchers who could expose the security flaws of Web browsers, server-side software and other Tesla Model 3 applications.

According to the Zero Day Initiative blog, Amat Cama and Richard Zhu identified a just-in-time bug in the Model 3 infotainment system and were able to display their message on the car’s dashboard screen. The duo were crowned the Master of the Pwn for 2019 and won the Tesla model 3, as well as the Master of Pwn trophy, laptops and US$375 000.

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Cama attended Northeastern University in Boston, USA, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science and was part of the Cyber Defence Team. He has a private pilot’s licence and is also a certified offensive security wireless professional. He has reverse engineering skills and penetrations testing skills. At home in Senegal, Cama tutors at S.O.S Kids Village and Talibou Dabo Center in Dakar.

Cama previously worked as a penetration tester at Virtual Security Research, research assistant at the University of California, Santa Barbara Seclab, product security engineer at Qualcomm and in senior security research at Beijing Chaitin Technology Co. In 2016 he won a Hall of Fame prize at Geekpwn Shanghai for his demo of a remote exploit against the Valve Source engine. In 2017, he successfully demonstrated a baseband exploit against the Samsung Galaxy S8 at Mobile Pwn2Own in Tokyo as an individual contestant.

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Cama is also an avid CTF player who is part of the Shellphish CTF team that took part in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge, as well as a number of other competitions.