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Car Thieves and Insurers Vote On Keyless Car Security
RockDoctor writes: The BBC reports that Britain's car thieves, rapidly followed by Britain's car insurance companies, have been expressing their opinions on the security of keyless car entry and/or control systems. The thieves are happy to steal them (often using equipment intended for dealer maintenance of the vehicles) and in consequence the insurance companies are refusing to insure such vehicles (or to accept new policies on such vehicles) unless they are parked overnight in underground (or otherwise secured) car parks. I guess I won't be considering buying one of those for another generation. If ever.
I've never been a fan of the keyless car design. But if I wanted a new car, I had little choice. And I knew I'd have no chance convincing car manufacturers to make a keyed version. All this time, I should have been making a fuss to the insurance industry instead.
Thank you insurance industry for making a sensible decision. Unfortunately, that may suck for anyone who owns such vehicles.
Because 10 years ago that's as good as it got. We moved on. Now the insurance companies are saying "This is fucking stupid. Fix it or we won't pay for your idiotic keyless thingamabob. Cmon guys, we fixed keys years ago. If you can't do better, don't bother"
"By far the most common way of a car being stolen is still from thieves breaking into homes and stealing keys," he said.
Don't leave your keys in the obvious places, including the spare keys.
For bonus points: Have some keys labeled "neighbor's house" that are useless.
Opening a car door is easy enough. That way the thief can steal your CDs. Hot wiring a modern car to steal the entire automobile is quite a bit more difficult. I've opened a lot of car doors. I've never started the ignition without a key on anything newer than 1980s, when you could just pull the lock cylinder with a sufficiently strong tool, then turn the switch with a screwdriver.
I have a car that uses a wireless key. After browsing the web trying to find more about the security, I found that you could buy a programmer that connects to the car's data port and programs a new key. What was surprising to me was how relatively easy it is to buy such a device and how quick the programming process was (about 30 seconds). A thief would have to get an entry into the car first (breaking a window, perhaps), but once that is done, it's relatively easy to just drive off with a newly programmed key. What I did was to disable to data port, not permanently, but more of a need to use basis. Since it works on obfuscation, this is not a type of security to be mass produced. Not knowing how exactly the port is disabled, it will take a long time to make it work, so I don't expect a thief to start taking the car apart. Wonder if you can claim for the insurance that the port is disabled. There are many other ways to steal a car, I just want to prevent the easy ones known today.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
The thieves are happy to steal them (often using equipment intended for dealer maintenance of the vehicles) and in consequence the insurance companies are refusing to insure such vehicles
This is ironic. When electronic systems were first rolled out, the car manufacturers did a fantastic job of convincing insurance companies they were far superior to mechanical lock systems. So good, that in some cases insurance companies initially labeled any theft of such a car as being likely to have been done in conspiracy with consent of the owner, since it was obvious no common thief could have cracked such awe-inspiring technological marvels of security.
Of course, this point of view was unfortunate for those first-generation owners who, who were labeled as suspected frauds. But initially very convenient for the insurance company, who could find an excuse to not pay out (at least until the police began to figure out just how easy it was to fool that "fool-proof" security).
>According to BMW their so-called "security" is so secured that there are BILLIONS of combination in their "secure key" system
Well there's the problem right there - obviously they didn't take computer security seriously or they'd realize that billions of combinations hardly gives a brute-force hacking simpleton time tor their coffee to cool - I don't think anyone has considered 32 bit encryption keys secure since... ever, really. And that's assuming there's no vulnerabilities in the system. Meanwhile in order for the mechanic to be able to replace a lost key you need to install a gaping back door in every car you make, rendering your security system irrelevant except to the most casual of thieves.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
My mother had a car stolen out of her garage while she was on vacation. The police actually found it, amazingly, in a park and ride well known to be a dropping off point for cars bound for Mexico. They actually took prints, which almost made me fall over in surprise. They got a match to a guy who was a known car thief. They did not arrest the guy and would not press charges even though my Mom wanted them to. Not only would they not do their job, but they wouldn't even tell my Mom who the perpetrator was so she could do their job for them.
Why waste time dusting for prints when you are not going to follow up?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Yes, you have to have comprehensive in order to cover theft. Of course, if you have a loan, the bank will insist on you having theft insurance, but for some reason they are not willing to pay for this coverage of which they are a beneficiary.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
;According to BMW their so-called "security" is so secured that there are BILLIONS of combination in their "secure key" system
Well there's the problem right there - obviously they didn't take computer security seriously or they'd realize that billions of combinations hardly gives a brute-force hacking simpleton time tor their coffee to cool
It only works if you say "BILLIONS of combinations" in Car Sagan's voice.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
>According to BMW their so-called "security" is so secured that there are BILLIONS of combination in their "secure key" system
Well there's the problem right there - obviously they didn't take computer security seriously or they'd realize that billions of combinations hardly gives a brute-force hacking simpleton time tor their coffee to cool - I don't think anyone has considered 32 bit encryption keys secure since... ever, really.
Given that physical keys can have only "thousands" of combinations and provide reasonable security (car thiefs will break the window rather than try to pick the lock), you don't need a bit 128 digital key to make a secure car door lock, you just need to rate-limit brute force attacks. no thief can spend the time testing thousands of physical keys in the lock door lock, and if the system stops listening for 5 minutes every N number of incorrect keys, then even a 32 bit digital key can be immune to a brute force attack (though the protocol has to protect against snooping)
And that's assuming there's no vulnerabilities in the system. Meanwhile in order for the mechanic to be able to replace a lost key you need to install a gaping back door in every car you make, rendering your security system irrelevant except to the most casual of thieves.
It needn't be a big gaping back door -- if every new car-key generation request has to be signed by the secure private key only known by the manufacturer, then stolen car-key programming equipment has a very short lifetime - it's only good until the equipment is reported stolen, and only validated service stations can get their car-key requests signed and it's trivial to track stolen cars back to the machine that generated the key.
Most of those billions of codes are easly circumvented by a replay attack. The cure is to lock and unlock your car with a physical key to prevent reading of the code. The other step is to add a switch to simply turn off the RF trancievers in the car when parking it in an unsecure location. A replay attack will fail when the RF is OFF.
The truth shall set you free!
Rate limiting would help a LOT, but may not be enough if the bad guys rig up a strong transmitter. If you are in a crowded parking lot, you probably don't much care which BMW you steal, the first one to unlock will be good enough.
It's not like BMWs are bargain basement cars, surely they could have spent a bit on an actually secure keyless entry system.
...The cure is to lock and unlock your car with a physical key to prevent reading of the code. The other step is to add a switch to simply turn off the RF trancievers in the car when parking...
Great point.
Once hackers started popping passenger doors remotely, I found out you could disable remote door unlock just by pulling the fuse on the receiver.
Now you need a physical smart key turn to open the door and disable the alarm.
Just picking the lock won't work either, because it's the smart key that disables the alarm.
Rate limiting would make ddosing a country club parking lot lots of fun.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Our car is badly scratched. It's second hand and one of us made additional scratch to it (non intentional).
I don't think anyone would be interested in robing such a car and we feel quite relaxed regarding theft risk (and when going through tight places).
It's not like BMWs are bargain basement cars, surely they could have spent a bit on an actually secure keyless entry system.
The problem is that the only right way to do it is a public key-based challenge/response system. This prevents replays from snooping, keeps the keys secure (they never leave the car or key fob), and essentially prevents brute force.
The issue is that this requires the key fob to have both a transmitter and a receiver, plus more computing power, making it larger, and would likely run the battery down pretty fast (even if the receiver is only powered for a few seconds after a button is pressed). Nobody wants to replace their key fob battery every few months.
The radios they use in these systems are ISM band, often 433MHz (Europe), 432MHz (Japan) or 915MHz (US). The bit rate is fairly low, often 9600 or maybe 30kb tops. Thus you can really only try maybe a couple of hundred keys per second, at the absolute limit.
Fortunately there is no need to brute force. Just set up a jammer, wait for someone to fail to notice that their car didn't lock as they were walking away, and attach your hardware to the car's debug port.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Rate limiting would help a LOT, but may not be enough if the bad guys rig up a strong transmitter.
Exactly. Even if the guy had to park right next to the car he wants to steal, the fact that he doesn't have to touch the target car means it doesn't look like anything nefarious is happening. So he can walk away, do his grocery shopping, while his tools do their thing, and if all goes well, he'll drive home in a much nicer car.
When I had my BMW the most common ways for them to be stolen was either a mole in the dealership making extra keys or the thieves break into your house and steal the key sitting there on a hook in the kitchen.