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Revealed: car industry was warned keyless vehicles vulnerable to theft a decade ago (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Experts alerted motor trade to security risks of ‘smart key’ systems which have now fuelled highest level of car thefts for a decade.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I have a question. What do you think a rolling code style security system does if the thief is amplifying your key fobs signal by standing in your driveway at 3 am and then transmitting it to your door lock? Because we're talking about keyless entry where you don't have to push any buttons on the key fob it just has to be within three feet of the vehicle. They are literally using your key to unlock your door. The key is always transmitting. The vehicle is always receiving. At the point where they have access to the interior of the vehicle they can just pull the fuses for the horn and lights and then pop the transmission shifter cable off the transmission control lever and manually put the car in neutral. This attack takes maybe ten minutes. At that point they can literally just roll the car onto a flatbed and drive away. The flipper zero costs $169 USD. But you can make one from parts for much less. A GPS blocking tool costs around $15. A signal repeater isn't expensive either. Keyless entry on the whole is broken.

You may stop joyriders and petty thieves. But you won't stop anyone looking to steal a car who has the know how and who is looking to sell your car for parts. The fact is, a lot of premium cars are vulnerable to attacks like this.

And before you even start about what I know about it, literally I'm an avionics tech. Rolling codes and frequency hopping is how we keep unfriendly forces from listening in on comms. Electronic attack and defence is literally what I did in the Navy for twelve years.

Rolling codes are a good security feature. But they do nothing to stop the attack that other articles on this subject better explain.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cars-hacked-stolen-keyless-vehicle-thefts/

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/crooks-are-stealing-cars-using-previously-unknown-keyless-can-injection-attacks/

https://www.locksmiths.co.uk/faq/keyless-car-theft/

[+] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The articles I linked do explain how they can start a car in order to drive it away using the CAN injection hack. But they also talk about the key signal repeater attack which would give them access to the interior of the car which does two things. The first is that it allows them to have access to the hood release and thereby the horn and the fuse box. Pulling the connector to the horn, or the fuse that gives the horn and lights power will make it so even if the alarm activates it can't sound. It also gives them Access to the transmission select lever which allows them to physically put the car in neutral. With the use of a GPS jammer it would prevent the car from sending it's location anywhere. Rolling codes prevent them from walking by you in the grocery store, recording the code your fob was putting out at that moment and then using that code later to enter your vehicle and drive away with it. It does nothing to prevent the kind of attack ops article is alluding to.

https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/where-do-you-park-your-car-keys-preventing-relay-attacks

"The research uncovered a form of keyless vehicle theft neither researcher had seen before. In the past, thieves found success using what’s known as a relay attack. These hacks amplify the signal between the car and the keyless entry fob used to unlock and start it. Keyless fobs typically only communicate over distances of a few feet. By placing a simple handheld radio device near the vehicle, thieves amplify the normally faint message that cars send. With enough amplification, the messages reach the nearby home or office where the key fob is located. When the fob responds with the cryptographic message that unlocks and starts the vehicle, the crook's repeater relays it to the car. With that, the crook drives off." This quote is directly from the Ars Technica article.