Posted on 05/12/2015 4:49:16 AM PDT by thackney
Hands-free car entry systems, which typically unlock car doors without requiring the pushing of any buttons when owners are close to their vehicles, provide great convenience. Unfortunately, however, people have begun marketing for sale devices that allow criminals to exploit a technological vulnerability in these systems, and crooks have been seen using “mystery devices” to open cars equipped with hands-free car entry systems. Once in a car, crooks can steal whatever is in it, and, while most of the recent issue has been just that, they can also potentially connect a device to the vehicle’s diagnostic port in an effort to download sufficient information in order to create a key to drive and steal the vehicle, a problem about which the British police are now warning....
While there have been various suggestions as to how keyless entry systems can be hacked, and various techniques have been discussed at conferences, the current issue seems to be the following:
The communications between your key fob and car are intended to take place only when the fob is near the vehicle (usually “near” means within approximately a yard or so from the vehicle), thereby ensuring that the car can be opened only when the owner is nearby. A relatively simple device that physically boosts the wireless signal between fobs and cars, however, enables communication to take place between at least some manufacturer’s fobs and cars when the two are much further apart. By leveraging such a signal booster, a criminal can trick a car into thinking that the fob is close by even when it is much further than a yard away; some reports claim that devices for sale online may work to open cars even if their associated fobs are as far away as the distance of an entire football field!
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I've heard that. Here's my question: I buy a car and get two fobs. I lock the car and take a bus to the other side of town. The wife comes home from a business trip far away and, having had her keys with her (read - far out of range of either the car or my fob) pushes the unlock button and the car opens. How does the car open since her fob cannot know the code used the last time?
Heh.
My college ride was a '46 Willys CJ2A, flat head four, 5.38 rear end, two speed transfer case, the whole headache.
Was a little faster than 45, but my jeep club was usually annoyed when I went along on mountain rides as they liked to run together on the highway to and from... and they had to slow to my maxed out, screaming speed of barely around 55.
:) It was great!
I have the perfected the best anti-theft system by driving a piece of crap no self-respecting thief would want to be caught dead in.
-PJ
Bring back “Hanging for Horse Thieves”.
The issue should not be how it it possible to defeat a locking or security system. The issue is:
Thou Shall NOT Steal!
Same for Identity Thieves... in fact, more-so.
I would suspect that a sequence is used for each independent fob.
The scary thing about these fobs is that the fob batteries only last two years. I was lucky that my battery died while the car was at home rather than on a trip.
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