If that tool gets leaked or sold online — Rodriguez himself says he doesn't plan to publish it — he says anyone could use it to jailbreak their tablet in minutes. “They just need to connect a cable and install new firmware, just as if you were jailbreaking your iPhone,” says Rodriguez.
Rodriguez also noted that his hacking technique could be used not only by a driver who wants to jailbreak his plate, but also by someone targeting the unknowing owner of a plate. If a hacker — or a parking valet or auto mechanic — could manage to remove the license plate and install their own firmware on it, Rodriguez warns, they could secretly track the driver or access the Internet by programming the plate. But their license plate number can also be changed. To connect to a server controlled by the hacker.
However, in addition to the physical access and time required to pull off that hack, a license plate saboteur would also need to overcome a feature of the reviver's plates that sends a notification to the owner when it becomes detached from the vehicle. Rodriguez says that tampering with it would require jamming the plate's radio communications, an additional wrinkle that makes the attack even less practical, though perhaps not impossible.
Rodriguez is not the first person to hack Reviver's systems. In 2022, security researcher Sam Curry found Vulnerabilities in the company's web infrastructure This allowed him to make himself administrator of their backend database, with the ability to track or change license plates at will. However, unlike Rodriguez's hardware hacking, Reviver was able to quickly fix its web-based bug to stop Curry's technique.
Although Curry's web hacking method was far easier than Rodriguez's hardware hacking before the Reviver patch, he says Rodriguez's method will likely have real appeal to some scofflaw drivers who might want to jailbreak their Reviver plates or Just want to buy pre-jailbroken plates. Online. “If you want to change your license plate number, James Bond style, then drive faster or something, you can change it for a few hours and without having to go to a parking garage,” says Curry. Might as well change it back.” “The people who are creating chaos on the road may be involved in this.”
Digital license plates are currently legal to purchase and register in California, Arizona, and Michigan, with several more states considering legalizing them in the coming years. As the rollout continues, Rodriguez and Curry argue that license plate manufacturers, transit regulators, and law enforcement all need to be aware that any system that relies solely on license plates as identifiers is a digital license. The platform could be susceptible to hacking – with potentially chaotic consequences.
“You have to assume that people are going to mess with them,” says Curry. “And people need to accept the implications of this.”