South Korean Police Investigate Over 80 Tesla Owners for FSD Feature Hacking

Recently, South Korean police launched an investigation into over 80 Tesla owners. These owners are suspected of violating the Automobile Management Act by cracking vehicle systems to enable the restricted FSD function, and could face up to two years in prison and a fine of 20 million won. The owners involved had all paid approximately 9 million won to permanently activate FSD, but due to South Korean regulatory certification issues, China-spec Teslas produced at the Shanghai Gigafactory cannot use the feature. In March 2026, an open-source project called tesla-open-can-mod launched on GitHub, where developers discovered through CAN bus communication that firmware could be used to modify the communication signals between the screen and the AP system to activate FSD. The South Korean owners adopted this method. Tesla patched the vulnerability at the end of March and reported the matter to South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Police intervened and identified the owners involved after months of investigation. A South Korean court dismissed a refund lawsuit filed by another 88 owners, on the grounds that Tesla had not promised fully autonomous driving and had already provided some functions. Tesla is currently applying to the South Korean government to include China-spec vehicles in the exemption scope, with the result yet to be announced.