January 8, 2026
Secure boot? Secure-ish!
Making Magic Leap past Nvidia's secure bootchain and breaking Tesla Autopilots
Hacker jailbreaks “secure” chips; fans cheer, Tesla owners sweat
TLDR: A researcher exposed an unfixable startup flaw in Nvidia’s Tegra X2 chips used in Magic Leap and some Tesla units. Commenters applauded the demo, slammed e-waste lockouts, and fretted whether newer Nvidia chips dodge the same problem—making device freedom and safety the hot debate.
A live conference talk just turned “secure boot” into secure-ish boot, showing how a researcher slipped past Nvidia’s chip startup defenses used in Magic Leap headsets and some Tesla self-driving computers. The big reveal: an unfixable hole in the chip’s built‑in recovery mode, meaning every Tegra X2—the brain inside these gadgets—could be vulnerable. One commenter dropped the must‑watch link, and the crowd piled in.
The mood? A spicy mash‑up of tech glee and corporate side‑eye. Many cheered the hacker’s crusade against e‑waste after Magic Leap reportedly bricked old headsets by killing activation servers. Others were stunned—“Wait, Magic Leap still exists?”—while Tesla watchers got nervy at the idea that Autopilot boxes could be poked. Nvidia fans prayed their newer chips (Orin, Thor) aren’t carrying the same BootROM baggage. The CCC conference itself drew love like a rock concert for hackers, while practical minds asked the important stuff like how fast do these things even boot? Jokes flew about USB “necromancy” resurrecting devices and “secure boot” becoming the new meme of “almost secure.” Bottom line: the demo lit up a debate where hackers celebrate freedom, owners worry, and chipmakers feel the heat.
Key Points
- •The researcher exploited the Magic Leap One’s bootloader over USB, then escalated to deeper firmware access.
- •Two Fastboot-related vulnerabilities were found: “sparsehax” in SparseFS unpacking and “dtbhax” in kernel DTB loading for persistence.
- •Fault injection was used on a Tegra X2 devkit to dump the BootROM for analysis.
- •An unpatchable vulnerability in the BootROM’s USB recovery mode was discovered and used to achieve highest-privilege code execution.
- •The exploit applies broadly to Tegra X2 devices, including Tesla Autopilot 2 and 2.5 hardware.