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Breaking a Car's Cipher
An anonymous reader alerts us to research out of Belgium and Israel that claims a practical attack on the KeeLoq auto anti-theft cipher. Here are slides from a talk (PDF) at CRYPTO 2007. From the researchers' site: "KeeLoq is a cipher used in several car anti-theft mechanisms distributed by Microchip Technology Inc. It may protect your car if you own a Chrysler, Daewoo, Fiat, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen, or a Jaguar. The cipher is included in the remote control device that opens and locks your car and that controls the anti-theft mechanisms. The 64-bit key block cipher was widely believed to be secure. In a recent research, a method to identify the key in less than a day was found. The attack requires access for about 1 hour to the remote control (for example, while it is stored in your pocket). The attacker than runs the implemented software, finds the secret cryptographic key, and drives away in your car after copying the key." Update: 07/23 15:27 GMT by KD : One of the researchers, Sebastiaan Indesteege, pointed out that the link to the paper was incorrect; their paper has not yet been released to the public. I also managed to mis attribute his nationality. He is Belgian, not Dutch. My apologies.
The linked paper is by Bugadanov (requires the entire code book). The authors of this paper have not published their paper in the wild (yet).
If a car thief has access to your keys for an hour, aren't you going to lose your car anyway?
Rob
KITT: Michael, someone's trying to hack into my operating system! Help me Michael!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Some of these cars could quite possibly contain that whole "key in range push button to start" option. My cousin has that option on her car, though I forgot the make/model...
Another reason to carry around an RFID jammer.
Quick, someone create Faraday pants, or should I line my pockets with tinfoil?
OK, what part of "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium" looks like "researchers in The Netherlands"??
In other news: The Canadian president George W. Bush invaded Iran because of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center of Chicago.
According to their slides, all you need is proximity to one of these devices for an hour, and the master key for the manufacturer can be found - which is simply XORd to the vehicle ID to authenticate. They were relying on a vast keyspace instead of a secure encryption method - security through obscurity.
Break one key device, break them all.
While it may be simple to break the code on the chip, you still need a copy of the key unless the car is push-button-ignition.
These days, many high-end car keys are CNC cut (my mini's key has huuuuuge tooling marks from a spindle-out-of-square), which will actually cause a bit of trouble. This isn't something you could easily do a putty-transfer on, nor does the group of people who spend a lot of time breaking cyphers typically overlap with the group of people who have and can work with CNC equipment.
In the end, I think flatbedding the car is the way to go. All the big chop shops are doing this now. If you're small-time, carjack. Alternately, get a real job.
That's okay. If you own a Daewoo, you could hand the key to a thief and they still wouldn't steal it. Nothing to see here, move along.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
The new keys are not like fobs that you have to push a button on ... they are transponders. The car pings them as you get close, and they respond with a code that unlocks the car. Basically, the car is pushing the transmit button.
-- Mitch
I just purchased a new car that doesn't have a mechanical ignition system. There's an place to attach the key (doesn't have metal teeth or anything), and a big "Start/Stop" button. The steering wheel lock is also electronic, and is controlled by the electronic signal from the key. I have no idea if my car uses KeyLoq--- I sure hope not.
Mechanical locks are on their way out, largely because they're ineffective against even moderately sophisticated criminals. That's the whole reason Immobilizer systems were rolled out in the first place. This attack effectively stips the immobilizer out of the car and rolls the security back to pre-Immobilizer levels. You only need to look at theft rates among models with and without immobilizers to see what impact that has.
Finally, for those who say that 1-hr access to the key is unreasonable: remember that the attack here is _key copying_, not theft. The immobilizer systems are designed to prevent copying, so that your valet or repair person can't make a copy of your key and steal it later. This attack takes a lot longer than other attacks which are out there (example), but it's still not out of the question.
The basic lesson of all these attacks is that manufacturers need to use strong cryptography rather than custom, homebrewed ciphers. Hopefully with fabrication prices dropping, this will be the last generation of truly ridiculous authentication systems.
It's the Netherlands, not Holland.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Why don't remote keys resync symmetric, unbreakable keys with the car every time they're physically inserted into the ignition?
...) properly.
When someone patents that device, just point to this post as prior art. If it's patent free, anyone can use it, and there's no excuse for not securing cars (and homes, and bikes, and
You're welcome.
--
make install -not war
A physical key is still a key, y'know? There is considerable overlap in concepts and techniques - why, putty transfer is simply a replay attack, while a rake is actually used to brute-force a lock by generating many pin position combinations in a very short time.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
My blog
It is however an understandable mistake to make, as most Dutch know very well, you can't expect Belgians to figure these things out.
But than again, it's not like linking to a
All you need is the correct sequence on the parking brake.
The mythical Honda override exists: It's a series of presses and pulls of the emergency brake. Each car, it seems, has a unique override code, which correlates to the VIN.
Well, that's very interesting, but I have to go.
I'm headed to the annual "Vegan food and wifi jamboree" at the co-op where I expect to "win" a new Prius.
Of course I have to bring my laptop. Don't worry, just because I'm sitting at the table next to you doesn't mean I'm using my machine to crack the crypto on your key while we enjoy our roasted yams. I'm just writing my tract about municipal wifi and organic gardening.
Oh, yeah? You own a Prius? In red? I always liked red. Man, you have the only red one here...
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
If you are buying a fancy car to show off your wealth or whatever, when perfectly good alternatives exist, you deserve to be robbed.
If you can't afford to have your expensive car stolen, then can you really afford that expensive car?"
Not everyone buys an expensive car to show off....many people just like performance.
That being said, often it is NOT the ultra luxury, expensive cars that are the most often stolen ones, at least in the US. The past few years the list of most stolen cars are the common, non-expensive models, usually slightly older Hondas or Toyota Camry's or the like.
Those are easy to steal, and chop up for parts.....at stolen Porsche GT3 is gonna stand out like a sore thumb when it gets reported stolen, but, a camry will blend in to traffic like all the other ones out there.
While I'd hate to get my car stolen...much like anything I own, that IS what insurance is for.
I love my 'toys', but, really, there just isn't much in life that can't be replaced...cars, tvs, women, furniture...etc.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's simply not worth it to have to deal with electronics that break, batteries that die, etc.
That has turned out to be FUD now that they are getting lots of miles now. The battery pack is easier to change than a typical transmission and now costs less. In addition it has been proven more reliable. (Google search Prius Battery Failures). The little 12 volt battery is a much higher failure rate item needing a 3-5 year replacement cycle just like their conventional counterparts.
In the trade of of mechanical parts for electronic, most mechanical high failure items on the Prius has been eliminated.
Here is a short list..
No belts, not even for a water pump or AC.
No Hydraulics hoses or lines except the brakes.
No leaky AC rubber hoses or shaft seals.
No clutches, pressure plates, bands, or hydraulics of any kind in the transmission
Here is how the improvements work.
The AC is a sealed electric unit like a home refrigerator. The compressor is body mounted eliminating Leaky shaft seals, belts, clutch, and hoses.
The transmission has 7 moving parts. None of them is any kind of friction, shift, or hydraulic part. It's built like and as reliable as a differential. The battery pack is composed of 7.2 volt modules. A module failure does not equal a battery pack replacement.
The Power steering is a linear electric motor for assist. This eliminates the power steering pump, hoses, and power steering fluid issues.
The power brakes use a compressor so it is a trade off for the vacuum module for a compressor.
The cooling system is powered by electric pumps. It traded belt driven problems for electric pump problems. I haven't seen reliability reports on these pumps yet which is a good thing.
Even the starter moter with it's brushes, solonoid bendix gear and other failure items has been eliminated. The brushless AC Motor/Generator set in the transmission starts the engine.
I studied all these issues before I bought a Prius. TCO is an important number to me.
For me personally, Here are some of my stats.
I have 120,000 on my Prius. At 20,000 and 80,000 miles I changed tires (the originals don't wear well). At 70,000 miles I had to change the 12 volt battery in late 2005 so it lasted almost 4 years.
At the last tire change, I had the brakes checked. I have 80% remaining. Other than give it gas and regular oil changes, it has required zero repairs except a rock chip in the windshield.
Most other cars I drove with over 100,000 miles were getting into needing starters, alternators, brakes, belts, power steering, Air Conditioner, and transmission service.
The truth shall set you free!
If the manufacturers ACTUALLY gave a crap about security they could easily enough make the system secure. Instead they're more interested in patentable special sauce and NIH.
The thing is, cryptography is at the same time very easy or very hard. It's very easy to utilize one of several freely available strong systems in order to be secure. It's very easy to invent a system from scratch that YOU don't know how to crack. It's very hard to invent your own system that nobody else will know how to crack. It's very easy to introduce a serious flaw when re-implementing someone elses crypto. If you haven't devoted your professional career to cryptography, the best bet is to utilize someone elses.
For example, Blowfish is completely free of encumberance and has several fully public domain implementations available in C. RSA is (now) equally free. It is well understood, has years of successful use behind it and years of analysis demonstrating that it would cost WAY more to crack the key than any car is worth (not to mention that it would take longer than the typical lifetime of a car). There are plenty of years old CPUs out there that have more than enough "oomph" to handle RSA and are well suited to embedded use. They might cost a dollar more, but this sort of system is not used in "bargain basement" cars.
They spend the extra cash on fine leather seats and steering wheel covers but use Yugo quality locks to protect it?
Wow, I'm actually surprised they found the thing at all. My only experience with Lojack was pretty funny.. A friend of mine had this big passenger van he used for work. One night we went out to get drunk in Brooklyn, and parked the van on the street. Long story short, we got far too drunk, couldn't find the van, and ended up calling it in as stolen. The next morning the van was located using Lojack, and it happened to be about 2 blocks from where we *thought* we left it. The funny bit is that he had no idea it even had Lojack. I guess the moral of the story is that if you don't remember where you parked, Lojack can make you feel quite foolish.
"Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
I've raked a lock open before.
Lock picking is NOT that complicated. Basically, just apply a rotation to the cylinder, while pushing each pin up until you find the one that binds. (Locks are not perfect, one pin will usually bind before the others.) Push that pin up until the shearline is at the right point, and the cylinder will rotate slightly, keeping that pin in place. Repeat to find the next pin that binds.
Now, there are some types of locks that make it harder to do this. (Through various means I won't get into here.) But ANY lock can be 'picked', even if just by bruteforcing it.
They are stealing high MPG cars with more and more frequency. Sure, they aren't 'pretty' but they are being stolen.
And another reason your argument is stupid: Just because I have money to buy nice things, dosen't mean I should have them stolen. Nor should I expect it.
You own a house. Lots of people don't own a house. You should be robbed/broken into just because you have a house?