Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/28/watch-these-guys-use-a-wireles.html
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We see this in our neighborhood ALL THE TIME. Usually it’s just people opening cars to rummage through. Recently, though, a neighbor had something similar happen where they got in, calmly looked something up on an electronic device, and even though the car needed a physical key to be started, they drove away in it. Same symptoms: very quick, no alarm. Most neighbors are keeping their keys in metal boxes or their freezer, which act like a faraday cage, so the signal repeater can’t reach their key fob.
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Note to self - if you get a nice car, disable keyless entry. Such things are a fundamentally bad idea. Or at the very least, keep your fob in a faraday cage when not in use.
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Wireless Central Locking i think is the main point these people target to broke the locking mechanism.
One advantage to having a 2004 Buick with nothing inside worth stealing.
The other advantage is pulling into any Old Country Buffet or Cracker Barrel and disappearing like Kaiser Sozhe.
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to paraphrase Henny Youngman…“Take my car, please!”
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Yes, except don’t, as that would be really, really, bad for me.
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This form of attack is relatively simple to foil. The relay attack introduces a detectable latency to the reply, and that time difference is detectable. Replies to your vehicles hail which arrive “too late” can be ignored.
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Mmm, yas, quite, now be a good chap and inform the manufacturers right sprightly like, eh?
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foil by wrapping your keyfob in foil
Thank goodness these new cars are so much smarter than the old ones!
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Part of the problem here is that in the UK most garages are too small to actually, you know, park cars, and in any case are filled with junk. Solihull has a lot of quite large houses by UK standards but many of them have garages which are simply too small for the size of cars people buy nowadays.
I’m sure my cars are prone to this kind of attack (though the keys are generally not in wireless range) but first of all they have to defeat the high security garage doors. It just amazes me that people will spend upwards of £40 000 on cars and then not secure the premises in some way.
I don’t think that those are white coveralls, just ones that appear white to the near-infrared security camera.
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You just need a right-sized car for your garage.
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Wireless devices aren’t actually that difficult for their manufacturers to secure. They just don’t give a crap, so they do the absolute bare minimum, if that. And while someone with a shit-ton of patience and risk-acceptance can hack the ECUs and flash them with new code, strictly speaking its a federal crime to reprogram your own car.
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Years ago I decided I wanted to keep our keys somewhere that was easy to reach but not obvious. I was doing a lot of antique hunting back then, so I added it to my list and eventually found a nice heavy brass trinket box with two lidded compartments. After polishing off the tarnish, it occurred to me that I was on my way to having a pretty good little Faraday cage, so I lined the interiors with copper mesh.
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I don’t think they’re coveralls either. More like something like this, and it’s probably made out of a shiny fabric that reflects that near-infrared light:
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You jest, but I am being strictly factual in telling you that the current “Mini” made by BMW is too big to fit into many British garages. (Over 4.2m long and 1.8m wide). If I got the larger of our two cars into such a garage - and it is not a big one - I would be faced with the slight difficulty of having to crawl out through the rear hatch as the doors would not open.
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My '83 Mustang didn’t have that problem. Re-keying the ignition lock was probably ten bucks, not ten years.
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My car is a vintage Volvo in no small part because it predates the addition of computers in cars. Unfortunately my bike and my wife’s truck, despite both being over fifteen years old now, both lack that virtue.
I’m slightly jelly. Always wanted a vintage Mustang. The news ones are POS.
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