David Colombo hacked 25 Teslas when he was 19. He taught himself to program at the age of ten. Lisa Kempke
Formerly a computer nerd in the 200-inhabitant village of Wittenbach, in the middle of nowhere in Bavaria, today one of the most sought-after cyber experts in the world: the story of David Colombo.
From his childhood room in Bavaria, Colombo hacked 25 Teslas. The then 19-year-old could open car doors, honk cars and even drive them. It all happened because of a vulnerability in the third-party app TeslaMate that Colombo found by accident, he told Business Insider.
“Shortly after I hacked the Teslas, Omar Sultan Al Olama emailed me and invited me to the World Government Summit in Dubai,” recalls Colombo. Sultan Al Olama is Minister for Digital Economy and Artificial Intelligence in the desert state. “I thought it was spam at first and was about to delete it,” Colombo laughs as he says it.
In 2022 we met David Colombo for the first time
Four years ago, this 19-year-old dropped out of high school and started his own business — he became world-famous through 25 hacked Teslas
The center of his life is now in Bahrain, a country in the Middle East, near Qatar.
David Colombo travels the world, the conversation took place in Berlin. Lisa Kempke
From there he advises companies on cyber security. At the same time, he uses the country as a departure point for numerous conferences at which he speaks: Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Berlin. One thing is clear: Colombo has seen a lot at the age of 21. And it’s also clear: It’s worth it for him. He now earns more than 100,000 euros a year. Some keynotes bring him more than 10,000 euros alone. Business Insider was able to verify this information. “I would never have thought that when I was sitting in my children’s room,” he says in an interview with us. “But my plan is: I want to be a millionaire.”
I want to be a millionaire
David Colombo in conversation with reporter Luca Schallenberger from Business Insider. Lisa Kempke
Dropped out of high school at age 15
In 2022, at the first Business Insider interview, Colombo told how he wanted to expand his company at the time. An office in Germany was planned. You could choose between Munich or Frankfurt. Even then he had offered penetration tests for companies, i.e. tested the security systems of companies for weak points. The then 19-year-old had already been self-employed for four years.