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Secure your car from electronic thieves

Last Updated 19 April 2015, 17:36 IST

Last week, I started keeping my car keys in the freezer, and I may be at the forefront of a new digital safety trend.

Let me explain: In recent months, there has been a slew of mysterious car break-ins in my Los Feliz neighbourhood in Los Angeles. What’s odd is that there have been no signs of forced entry.

The most recent incident took place on a Monday morning 10 days ago. It was just after 9 am, I saw two teenagers on bikes (one girl, one boy) stop next to my 2013 gray Prius.
As I watched from  my window, the girl, hopped off her bike and pulled out a small black device from her backpack. She then reached down, opened the door and climbed into my car.

As soon as I realised what had happened, I ran outside and they quickly jumped on their bikes and took off. How were they able to unlock my car door so easily?
When the police arrived, they didn’t have much of an answer. I called Toyota, but they didn’t know, either. I finally found out that I wasn’t crazy in, of all places, Canada.
The Toronto Police Service issued a news release last Thursday warning that thieves “may have access to electronic devices which can compromise” a vehicle’s security system. But the police did not specify what that “device” actually was.

Thieves have been breaking into and stealing cars with the help of electronic gadgets for several years now. Jalopnik, the car blog, has written about a “secret device”used to unlock cars. And dozens of other websites have told stories about burglars hacking into cars. As these reports illustrate, and videos online show, in some instances thieves are able to drive away with the cars without needing a key.

Still, I continued my search. Diogo Mónica, a security researcher and chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Public Visibility Committee, said that some sophisticated thieves have laptops equipped with a radio transmitter that figures out the unique code of a car’s key fob by using “brute force” to cycle through millions of combinations until they pick the right one.

Security researchers I spoke with said that most cars with a keyless entry system can be hacked.

But none of the contraptions Mónica or others told me about seemed to be what those teenagers used.

A more likely answer came from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a trade group for auto insurers and lenders, which issued a warning last month about a “mystery device” that can emulate a key.

Similar reports have surfaced on The Register, a technology news site, and on car message boards, about a simple $30 device made in China and Eastern Europe that allows thieves to break into and steal BMWs.

I finally found what seems like the most plausible answer when I spoke to Boris Danev, a founder of 3db Technologies, a security company based in Switzerland. Danev specialises in wireless devices, including key fobs, and has written several research papers on the security flaws of keyless car systems.

When I told him my story, he knew immediately what had happened. The teenagers, he said, likely got into the car using a relatively simple and inexpensive device called a “power amplifier.”

He explained it like this: In a normal scenario, when you walk up to a car with a keyless entry and try the door handle, the car wirelessly calls out for your key so you don’t have to press any buttons to get inside. If the key calls back, the door unlocks. But the keyless system is capable of searching for a key only within a couple of feet.

Danev said that when the teenage girl turned on her device, it amplified the distance that the car can search, which then allowed my car to talk to my key, which happened to be sitting about 50 feet away, on the kitchen counter. And just like that, open sesame.

 “You can buy these devices anywhere for under $100,” Danev said. Until car companies solve the problem, he said, the best way to protect my car is to “put your keys in the freezer, which acts as a Faraday cage, and won’t allow a signal to get in or out.”
Which is why my car key is now sitting next to a tub of chocolate ice cream.
 

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(Published 19 April 2015, 17:36 IST)

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