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This article is printed in the current Westways magazine and I thought it was interesting and hope you do to, and it may save one of us from getting our new car stolen.
You pull into the grocery store parking lot to pick up some items for the weekend, and you park your car. As you head for the door, you point your arm toward the car and push a button on your keyless remote to lock it. You don't hear the usual faint chirp, but you're in a hurry and don't give it a second thought. When you return 15 minutes later, you discover that your car is gone. Welcome to the world of 21st century auto theft!
Nowadays, anyone can go to a home improvement store and buy a $20 device that jams the remote keyless entry transmitter on a vehicle. If a driver isn't paying attention, he walks away from his vehicle, presses the button on his remote and assumes that it locks.
But a thief may be sitting two or three cars over in the parking lot, punching a button to block the signal. The vehicle doesn't lock and the thief has access to your laptop, portable gps or whatever is inside. With enough time he can get away with the whole vehicle. Or the thief might find the valet key that the dealer had tucked inside the owner's kit in the glove box, many owners don't even know its there.
To guard against jammers, pay attention to your surroundings and make sure the doors do indeed lock when you press the button.
Auto theft is attracting a different class of criminal these days, smarter, technologically savvier, and a lot harder to deter and apprehend.
Sniffing keys: So-called smart keys or proximity keys are systems that use bladeless key fobs to automatically unlock the car and allow you to start your car with the push of a button. A receiver inside your car detects and reads digital pulses from the key fob transmitter. It takes a smart thief to crack a smart key, but the bad guys have risen to the challenge. One method involves a team of two people. The first thief stands within a few feet of the vehicle's owner in a restaurant or supermarket, his electronic equipment, which he carries in a bag or briefcase, "sniffs" the smart key fob and wirelessly relays an amplified signal to a second thief standing near the target car. The car unlocks, the second thief enters the car, pushes the ignition button and makes a getaway.
This technique is not wide spread yet and the only defense is to have your smart key basically in a metal box. Every system can be defeated and has been defeated. As todays vehicles age, the ways to defeat their sophisticated antitheft systems will probably become more commonplace. In other words, 10 or 15 years from now, cars with RFID reading immobilizers and smart keys might well top the list of most stolen vehicles and the war's frontier will have moved to other yet to be developed countermeasures.
The article was several pages long and have just abbreviated it. You can find the entire article in the current AAA Westways Magazine. Interesting stuff!
You pull into the grocery store parking lot to pick up some items for the weekend, and you park your car. As you head for the door, you point your arm toward the car and push a button on your keyless remote to lock it. You don't hear the usual faint chirp, but you're in a hurry and don't give it a second thought. When you return 15 minutes later, you discover that your car is gone. Welcome to the world of 21st century auto theft!
Nowadays, anyone can go to a home improvement store and buy a $20 device that jams the remote keyless entry transmitter on a vehicle. If a driver isn't paying attention, he walks away from his vehicle, presses the button on his remote and assumes that it locks.
But a thief may be sitting two or three cars over in the parking lot, punching a button to block the signal. The vehicle doesn't lock and the thief has access to your laptop, portable gps or whatever is inside. With enough time he can get away with the whole vehicle. Or the thief might find the valet key that the dealer had tucked inside the owner's kit in the glove box, many owners don't even know its there.
To guard against jammers, pay attention to your surroundings and make sure the doors do indeed lock when you press the button.
Auto theft is attracting a different class of criminal these days, smarter, technologically savvier, and a lot harder to deter and apprehend.
Sniffing keys: So-called smart keys or proximity keys are systems that use bladeless key fobs to automatically unlock the car and allow you to start your car with the push of a button. A receiver inside your car detects and reads digital pulses from the key fob transmitter. It takes a smart thief to crack a smart key, but the bad guys have risen to the challenge. One method involves a team of two people. The first thief stands within a few feet of the vehicle's owner in a restaurant or supermarket, his electronic equipment, which he carries in a bag or briefcase, "sniffs" the smart key fob and wirelessly relays an amplified signal to a second thief standing near the target car. The car unlocks, the second thief enters the car, pushes the ignition button and makes a getaway.
This technique is not wide spread yet and the only defense is to have your smart key basically in a metal box. Every system can be defeated and has been defeated. As todays vehicles age, the ways to defeat their sophisticated antitheft systems will probably become more commonplace. In other words, 10 or 15 years from now, cars with RFID reading immobilizers and smart keys might well top the list of most stolen vehicles and the war's frontier will have moved to other yet to be developed countermeasures.
The article was several pages long and have just abbreviated it. You can find the entire article in the current AAA Westways Magazine. Interesting stuff!
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