Automotive AI Startup Accuses Rival Comma.ai of Hacking After IP Address Trail

A small automotive tech startup says someone tried to steal its self-driving model, and the IP address logs point directly at a well-known competitor.

IQ.Lvbs, a three-person outfit building AI driving software, published a blog post laying out what it claims was a coordinated effort to compromise its systems between October 7 and 14. The alleged targets included NovaSpark, the company's driving model, user devices, private driving data, and its authentication system. According to IQ.Lvbs, the first requests in that wave came from an IP address registered to Comma.ai.

The whole saga started innocuously enough. On October 3, IQ.Lvbs announced a private beta of NovaSpark in Comma.ai's own Discord server, a reasonable place to do it given that the model runs on Comma.ai's camera hardware. Four days later, the alleged attacks began. Four days after that, IQ.Lvbs' team found themselves banned from the Comma.ai Discord. Beta testers have apparently been shown the door too.

Comma.ai's CTO, Harald Schäfer, had already posted in the Discord on October 7 under the username Torq_boi, accusing IQ.Lvbs of being less than honest about NovaSpark's origins. His claim was that it amounted to a fine-tune of Comma.ai's own Rebellious Hope model, dressed up as something more original. "Don't lie to people about what you're doing," he wrote.

IQ.Lvbs flatly rejects that. The company says Comma.ai doesn't even have NovaSpark's model weights or ONNX files, so it's not clear how anyone there could reach that conclusion. The startup also published log data it says shows the username haraschax, which matches Schäfer's GitHub handle, appearing alongside the Comma.ai IP addresses.

None of this looks great for Comma.ai, which is already dealing with a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into whether its driving automation technology played a role in five crashes that resulted in three deaths.

Schäfer and Comma.ai did not respond to requests for comment.

IQ.Lvbs says it is weighing legal action. Cat, the team's UI/UX designer, told The Register the company is reviewing its options and considering involving the authorities. His theory on the motive is simple enough: NovaSpark outperforms Comma.ai's current models, and that threatens the whole business case for buying Comma.ai hardware.

Whether any of this ends up in court remains to be seen. For now, the self-driving industry has added corporate espionage allegations to its already crowded list of problems.