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Default ForgeRock password let researchers unlock cars, report says
The Hacker News says researchers used a default ForgeRock admin login on two unnamed automakers' identity servers to take over accounts and start test cars in February 2026.
- New headline Was: “Default 'admin:admin' Server Password Helps Researchers Hack Two Automakers, Unlock and Start Cars”
- Our desk filed its story
Two unnamed automakers' customer login systems could be fully taken over because an identity-server admin console still used its default password, The Hacker News reported Monday, citing researchers Shubham Shah and Sam Curry1.
Both brands' mobile apps signed customers in through ForgeRock, now part of Ping Identity, The Hacker News said1. On those servers the researchers reached an OpenIDM administrator console powered by Apache Felix that still accepted the documented default username and password of admin, according to the report1.
ForgeRock's hardening guide tells operators to remove or protect that console before going live because it stores its own password separately from the rest of the system, The Hacker News said1. The console was blocked from the open internet, but the researchers used encoded slashes and extra characters so the edge treated the request as a static file while the Java backend treated it as the console path1.
Inside the console they used a built-in scheduler to run code on the identity server, then changed a target account's email and password and signed in through the normal app, the report said1. Those tokens let them send the account's own vehicle commands: they unlocked the doors and started the engine of a test car in the United States in February 2026, with the owner standing next to it, then stopped the engine and locked it again1.
They tested the full attack only on their own and consenting owners' cars, and both U.S. systems were fixed about two hours after they reported the problem, The Hacker News said1. Changing the email and password did not log the owner out of the app, and alerts could be redirected, according to the report1.
Shah published a second write-up on Australian systems for the same brands, where admin credentials for the identity server had been left in the app's code for a test setup, The Hacker News said1. Combined, the researchers said they could send unlock and engine-start commands to the brands' cars in Australia, the United States, and Canada; the second post did not give a date for when the Australian systems were fixed1.
Neither write-up says whether anyone else found or used the path before it was closed, according to The Hacker News1. The outlet did not name the two car brands1.
