You Have Been Hacked!

Millions of cars at risk as keyless entry systems can be hacked, report says

The keyless entry system seemed exciting and stylish to buyers but as time and reviews teach us it seems to have become a safety risk. Drivers that use Volkswagen remote keyless entry system are much more at risk of their cars being stolen.

The most worrying aspect of this risk is that the equipment thieves need to break through this system costs no more than 30. Car theft has just become easier with this system. Over the last 20 years many of these Volkswagen have been sold and research has now shown that these cars are a target for thieves as they can be broken into using cheap and available tools.

Other models using this keyless entry system are also at risk. Some of these are Audi, Seat and Skoda models. In essence any car that has a keyless entry system is at risk of theft and more so then other vehicles.

The research was carried out by three UK researchers and a fourth company in Germany and the extensive studies they carried out proved the vulnerability of these models.

The simplicity of the attack is quite worrying. Signals sent by drivers when they press their key to unlock their car are copied and clones using cheap tools to allow access to the vehicle in future. The attacker must be 100m of the car in order for it to be successful. This is not much of a deterrent as most thieves stay nearby to watch the driver’s routine and actions before making their move anyway.

Some of these cars that are vulnerable to attack are still on the market being sold and aside from the latest MQB platform VWs models the rest are still an easy target for thieves.

We have not been giving too many details as criminals could use this to learn further how to break into these cars but work and research is now being carried out as to how to reduce the vulnerability of these models.

Some researchers managed to figure out the whole process of how hackers get through anti-theft systems however, Volkswagen gained a restraining order against them to prevent its publication as that would pose a further risk for the company cars. As it is with any technology, there are cheat devices so with a small radio a car can be broken into which is certainly a huge risk motorists face. May be we should all return to the good old days of old classic cars.

Obviously a step by step guide on how thieves go about hacking will only help thieves figure out how to go about theft and how to find other ways. Although researchers insist they did not go into detail on all of the Volkswagen models the restraining order was filed and some details were removed before any articles publication.

The details that were removed means that thieves cannot figure out how to go about hacking these systems yet the research can help companies know how to make their models immune and less vulnerable.