Researchers drove a NIO ES8 electric SUV deep into a Norwegian underground mine specifically to sever its external connections. The car kept attempting to reach servers, most of them located in China. These findings echo broader concerns about hidden data collection, similar to how a surveillance app was built to covertly target users without their knowledge.
That finding sits at the center of Project Lion Cage, a multi-year study initiated in 2022 by Tor Indstøy, a risk management and threat intelligence executive at Telenor Group. Indstøy purchased the NIO ES8 as a dedicated research platform.
The project arrives as Chinese EV brands expand across European markets with assurances about local data processing. Observed network behavior appears to contradict those assurances.
Why on Earth wouldn’t it keep trying? That’s how signals work. If my router goes down my computer is going to keep trying to connect to it even though it’s off. That’s not fucking news.
Yeah, I had the same thought when reading this
What a weird article
My assumption would be that they drove the car into the mine to see what would (or wouldn’t) work if the vehicle was cut off from the mothership. My hunch is they didn’t really find anything of interest so this is what gets reported.
Thank you!!!
If I’m reading correctly, they specifically tried to stop it from doing so and even in what is essentially a faraday cage it keeps trying to link with Beijing to spill the tea, not exactly what you want if you “own” a product
Yeah, and that’s how connections work.
It doesn’t specify in the article if they toggled the WiFi switch off in the OS, one would assume they did before driving it into a mountain.
If so, not cool to keep calling home. If not, PEBKAC error
You really think a car tries to “call home” using WiFi?
A more honest researcher would say “bought any vehicle from x country and it kept trying to contact servers in x country even after driving it into a mine”. They lose credibility when they try to insinuate that this only happens with EVs and only with China made vehicles.
I have no idea what the point is of driving it into a mine? Of course the client will keep trying to reconnect to the server, that’s how software usually works…
The car kept attempting to reach servers
To the surprise of whom?
ANY device that relies on radio signal communication for any of its functionality, taken anywhere (underground mine, parking garage, Antarctica, Santa’s workshop, etc), and it’ll try to maintain it’s connections. That’s just what they do.
Okay, but China Bad
It would be extremely noteworthy if it stopped once it was out of range, because how would it know?
The car kept attempting to reach servers, most of them located in China
Now try the same experiment with cars from other countries.
And then let’s hear from someone who can tell the world how to disable this anti-feature without breaking the car that we bought and paid for.
Am I the only one in this thread that feels like a vehicle here shouldn’t even have any form of internet connection regardless what nation it is from? The fact that this is from China doesn’t matter. Why does a vehicle even need network equipment (other than a FM radio at most)?
Ah, because neither Google nor Apple track their users and would never, ever share said data with US (or other) agencies… right? RIGHT?
Sure. Don’t worry about this bad behavior, because others engage in it, and it’s not like anyone calls out US tech privacy issues. I struggle to imagine someone naturally reacting this way. Are you for real?
What I’m saying is just because it’s China doesn’t make it any worse than devices and cars phoning home to US agencies/corporate entities. Might be fuckery from both sides but I don’t get the disproportionate uproar.
I agree it is something we should worry about and pay attention too, but just because something occurs doesn’t mean it was nefarious on purpose. Apple is better than many, but let’s say you have an iPhone. The iPhone is constantly reaching out and reporting it’s location to the findmy app that is only accessible by the users. If that phone is in a cave performing this test, it will be reaching out continuously similar to this car. Apple doesn’t sell that data, but where it becomes a breach of privacy is that if a judge gives a warrant, Apple has to turn it over. (So suddenly it isn’t only accessible to the user meaning verification is NORMALLY required to allow Apple to access the data, but they could bypass said verification.
So does that mean no one should ever enable find my on their devices… Maybe, but people weigh it against whatever they find useful about it.
Somebody smarter than I will definitely delve into the guts of incoming Chinese EVs and figure out what part(s) to strip to stop this…
And if you’re in America and you have an EV, it’s statistically likely to be a Tesla. Tesla has starlink compatibility baked into their cars too and you’d better believe that sweet juicy data is being shared around.
If I was stuck with a Tesla against my will, I’d at least try the same thing for it, too.
I have Chinese manufactured IP cameras. they do not connect to the internet. yet, they still attempt to connect to Chinese servers at least once a minute.
this has been going on for at least 15 years.
they do not connect to the internet. yet, they still attempt to connect to Chinese servers
Via?
I have an Chinese manufactured American developed phone. It connects to an American server frequently.
difference is, China has been caught multiple times creating backdoors into their hardware through software.
I guess that means America is just better at foreign espionage than China 🤣
Obviously it would keep calling…
The point was likely to see what would happen if they could be 100% sure it couldn’t connect in anyway.
Before deciding if it’s worth attempting to find every conney, you need to verify what happens if you did succeed.
Like, finding out it bricks every vehicle after 24 hrs means it’s useless to bother and they need banned.
As long as it doesn’t brick the thing I’m willing to go hunting with a hammer and chisel to cut the thing off, not like I need more GPS than my phone or anything like that
This article is so stupid with the dumbest fearmongering clickbait title -
Anything that calls home will try to call home. Connection or not. You put an LG tv (edit: just found out that when LG and TV are put together without a space, it gets censored?) in a faraday cage and it will try to phone home. There’s no reason it would suddenly stop doing that because there’s no point to adding another line of code to get it to stop when it doesn’t need to.
Not to mention that the important part is this:
The critical caveat: the traffic was encrypted. Researchers could document destinations and data volumes, but not the content of the packets themselves. No evidence of specific personal data exfiltration was found, and the tests do not prove that NIO is transmitting sensitive information to Chinese authorities.
Now compare that to a plethora of other car manufacturers that don’t even bother to encrypt your data and explicitly say that you will be tracked by them and have your data sold.
https://cybernews.com/privacy/mozilla-cars-track-sexual-activity-sell-data/
cars track even sexual activity, sell user data to third parties
My takeaway was that this was the important bit
The project arrives as Chinese EV brands expand across European markets with assurances about local data processing. Observed network behavior appears to contradict those assurances.
this. I seen people try to just use hostnames to block the LG telemetry, and the result is it just phone home harder, the logs just show it spams thousands of requests per second. Only way to stop it is to relay it to a fake server to return a fake response.
Can’t this be solved with legislation? I mean, all they have to do is say “no vehicles may be sold within our borders if they attempt to communicate with any servers.” Vehicles never did this 15 years ago and it’s insane they operate like massive phones with wheels now.
that would be the only sensible approach, but we all know it will never happen
China isn’t the only one
Lol wut. What kind of scaremongering BS article is this?
Telemetry system attempts to phone home during connectivity interruption
“FIRE UP THE PRESSES!”
If I take my cellphone into a cave it too will keep calling home.
With all our formidable intelligence and NSA capability and massive massive funding, no one can tell whats in those communications after all this time huh. We even have physcial access to the devices and we still cant figure it out. Next time we are told the government needs to remove citizens constitional rights to privacy or needs us to use insecure encryption keys, we should all question what the hell for. And next time I hear “Israel helps us with our intelligence” I want to hear what they came up with in understyanding what chinese devices are sending home, or they can shut the hell up. So far all we seem capable of is spying on our own citizens, IF we all use insecure communications and allow our every movement in public to be videoed. I am not impressed.
or needs us to use insecure encryption keys
look up QWAC
