Car thieves with mystery box

[halffull]

All over America, criminals are using improvised electronic devices to electronically unlock vehicles and steal whatever they find inside. These “mystery gadgets” reportedly recreate the same signals that the key fobs that so many of us carry around send out. As you will see below, footage is popping up nationwide of thieves using these “mystery gadgets” to remotely unlock car doors and disable alarm systems. Once a car has been unlocked, it takes these thieves just a few moments to take what they want before leaving without a trace. This is now happening all over the country, and authorities do not know any way to prevent it from happening. For now, the most common piece of advice that police are giving to people is to not leave any valuables inside your vehicle at all.

When reports of this sort of crime first came out, even car manufacturers were totally stumped. Nobody could figure out how this was happening, and CNN startled a lot of people when they started reporting on this. The following is an excerpt from one of those reports…


Police across the country are stumped by a rash of car thefts. In surveillance video of the thefts, criminals appear to open locked cars with a mysterious handheld device.

Nobody, not even the car manufacturers, knows how it works.

In Long Beach, Calif. The man walked up to the car, and used a small box to open it. Right next to him another man, also using a box, opens that car.

The problem is they’re thieves without keys. Now they’ve swiped all valuables from the cars.

In Chicago, it was the exact same scenario. A man by a sedan unlocked it without a key. The alarm was disabled by some mystery device.


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more at http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/thieves-are-using-mystery-gadgets-to-electronically-unlock-cars-and-steal-what-is-inside?

[13th Warrior]

I'd say it's a modified garage door opener.

[TargeT]

no mystery here at all, it's just repeating the signals produced by key fobs, there's absolutely no security in wireless key entry for garages or cars yet...

very simple to do this, especially if you have google and a soldering iron :P

[Sidney]

YOu know what really irks me, they caught the perp with the dash cam but they block his face from the news footage. protect the criminals.

[GrnEggsNHam]

Oh someone finally did this lol. I thought of this when I was around 9 years old watching my dad install our garage door. I asked him what was to prevent someone else from coming up our driveway and using the same pattern and frequency(I obviously asked in a simpler manner at that age, another remote lol). I was told it was unlikely that anyone could guess the correct configuration of our specific receiver(my dad modified the dip switches altering the pattern from the factory default).

A few years later my parents purchased a new car with key less entry. Right away I asked if that was a good decision, and provoked my dad saying I thought I could break into it. I didn't take him up on that challenge(Civilization the game was consuming 4-5 hours of my time a day) but my idea was that a would be thief had a receiver near your car. When you pressed the key less entry the receiver would pick up those signals along with all the other noise it had been receiving. The thief retrieves their device from under your car and sorts through the data to find the moment you unlocked the vehicle. Copy those patterns and reproduce with your own transmitter.

[carriellbee]

no mystery here at all, it's just repeating the signals produced by key fobs, there's absolutely no security in wireless key entry for garages or cars yet...

very simple to do this, especially if you have google and a soldering iron :P

That's exactly what I was thinking. Easy peasy!

[carriellbee]

YOu know what really irks me, they caught the perp with the dash cam but they block his face from the news footage. protect the criminals.

I think it is quite ODD that the thief did not take the dash cam. It was right there and was probably the most valuable thing in the car. But maybe they are after the "Home" location from the car's GPS. And if the car is programmed to open the garage door at home (as mine is), they could probably snatch that code as well. It will be interesting to see if these thefts will be linked to thefts at the victims' homes...

[Czarek]

Could be a weak EMP generator. Just a guess.

[toad]

Yeah this isnt a new idea. With raspberry pi's all over the place now, all anyone would need is to analyze the RF, and then just emulate it. The attack is generally two staged, first you sniff, and figure out the nature of the fq, and then attack, by emulating and emitting. Technology is getting smaller and smaller, so there is no telling what people are coming up with.

[korgh]

A very handy gadget!
I should to offer one like this to my wife.. she always looses the car's key. :)

[Robert J. Niewiadomski]

FYI, couple of years earlier we had almost similar plague here in Poland. The hack worked by jamming key fobs signals, not repeating them. The owner was sure the central lock was closed and alarm system armed when in fact it just blinked lights but failed to do so. So the car stayed open all the time. Ready and waiting to be plundered...

Simple safety measure: when you think you've locked your car, double check door handles. If they are still unlocked, try to lock the car again. If the situation persists go to the repair shop, and inform the owner of the place of the issue.

The key fob signals can't be repeated asfaik. The security code changes every time the signal is sent. Repeating same signal will fail to unlock the car.

More possible is to hack into car via bluetooth:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/how-an-mp3-can-be-used-to-hack.html
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/09/04/hackers-find-weaknesses-in-car-computer-systems/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_Remote_access_and_other_security_issues
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/07/disabling-a-cars-brakes-and-speed-by-hacking-its-computers-a-new-how-to/
http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/car-hackers-release-tools/240159477
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/10hack.html?_r=0
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hackers-hijack-car-computers-and-take-the-wheel-1.1322678

It's possible one of the above exploits got loose out of the lab...

[korgh]

FYI, couple of years earlier we had almost similar plague here in Poland. The hack worked by jamming key fobs signals, not repeating them. The owner was sure the central lock was closed and alarm system armed when in fact it just blinked lights but failed to do so. So the car stayed open all the time. Ready and waiting to be plundered...

Simple safety measure: when you think you've locked your car, double check door handles. If they are still unlocked, try to lock the car again. If the situation persists go to the repair shop, and inform the owner of the place of the issue.

The key fob signals can't be repeated asfaik. The security code changes every time the signal is sent. Repeating same signal will fail to unlock the car.

More possible is to hack into car via bluetooth:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/how-an-mp3-can-be-used-to-hack.html
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/09/04/hackers-find-weaknesses-in-car-computer-systems/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_Remote_access_and_other_security_issues
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/07/disabling-a-cars-brakes-and-speed-by-hacking-its-computers-a-new-how-to/
http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/car-hackers-release-tools/240159477
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/10hack.html?_r=0
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hackers-hijack-car-computers-and-take-the-wheel-1.1322678

It's possible one of the above exploits got loose out of the lab...

That is very possible. it's all about radio frequency and how to scan. There are a bunch of examples on the internet showing how to build but no one to prevent... This is the dark side of technology.

Cheers

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

If I become wealthy, I will definitely own an older car.

1960s sounds good.

lol!

No fancy electronic nonsense I hope :(