'New Way of Stealing Cars': Hacking Them With A Laptop (marketwatch.com)

retroworks writes: The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled), CBS and Marketwatch all lead the morning with stories about the newest method of stealing (late model) cars. No need for hacking off the ignition switch and touching the wires to create a spark (controversial during broadcasts in 1970s television crime criticized for "teaching people to steal cars"). Thieves now use the laptop to access the automobile's computer system, and voila. "Police and car insurers say thieves are using laptop computers to hack into late-model cars' electronic ignitions to steal the vehicles, raising alarms about the auto industry's greater use of computer controls. The discovery follows a recent incident in Houston in which a pair of car thieves were caught on camera using a laptop to start a 2010 Jeep Wrangler and steal it from the owner's driveway. Police say the same method may have been used in the theft of four other late-model Wranglers and Cherokees in the city. None of the vehicles have been recovered." The article concludes with the example filmed of a break-in in Houston. The thief, says the NICB's Mr. Morris, likely used the laptop to manipulate the car's computer to recognize a signal sent from an electronic key the thief then used to turn on the ignition. The computer reads the signal and allows the key to turn. "We have no idea how many cars have been broken into using this method," Mr. Morris said. "We think it is minuscule in the overall car thefts but it does show these hackers will do anything to stay one step ahead." No details on modifying the program to run on Android or iPhone -- there's not yet "an app for that."

Comments

Physical access

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see in the video that the thief triggers the vehicle alarm, and then proceeds to work on it as the alarm is going off. That means that even old-school hot wiring would have worked. Once the thief has access to the car and plenty of time, there's nothing to prevent him from taking the car.

Re:Physical access

[beelsebob]

The "old school" of hotwiring where you simply connect the right wires in the cab and spark away does not work on any modern vehicle, no matter how much time you have. In fact, hot wiring at all pretty much doesn't work on those vehicles. The reason is that modern engines don't really work unless they have a computer giving them all kinds of information about fuel flow, air mixtures, valve timing, etc. They just need an ECU working in order for them to work. Getting the ECU to work involves convincing it that there actually is an ignition key present, which is not just a matter of connecting some wires. Hence the need for a more complex hack here (note, that doesn't mean the hack was actually complex, just more complex than connecting some wires). You do actually need to convince the ECU firmware that a key is present.