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'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."
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."
Well Mr. Morris... it's not like the auto industry is even making a serious attempt at vehicle security to begin with. It really is not hard to stay "one step ahead"... in fact the industry is really just refusing to step ahead themselves. A toddler will get farther down the road as long as they refuse to move.
How long before a car can be remotely hacked and told to self-drive itself to the chop-shop? By someone in another country?
Yeah, I miss the old days when cars used to break down completely before they reached 80,000 miles, and when they poured out lead-contaminated exhaust and enough sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide to create acid rain, and when they got 8 miles per gallon, and when they would fly off the corners in improperly banked turns, and fly into a spin when braking on a wet road, and would impale drivers on steering wheel shafts in head-on collisions.
Ah, you must be talking about American cars.
They're becoming increasingly rare, and therefore expensive, but you can still get all of those features in used cars. The lead additive for gas is very hard to find in first world countries, but there are still places you can get that to complete the primitive automobile experience.
Don't forget, older cars are also easier to fix after a crash because they don't have those stupid crumple zones that newer cars have. Instead of trying to minimize impact to the owner, who is obviously the most expendable part of an old car during a crash, older cars maximize their own well being, knowing that there will always be a new owner. Older cars have the strongest anti-hacker technology available and many are immune to the effects of an EMP.
However, don't forget that modern cars have some benefits also. Older cars rarely have appropriate surfaces to affix your iPad so all of your music, movies and games are right in front of you during your boring commute. While the obvious solution of attaching them to the windshield with velcro is simple, most older cars have non-vertical windshields making it harder to reach controls at the bottom of the screen.
Many high end newer cars are susceptible to hacking, in the near future making it possible to steal and deliver the car to a chop shop or international shipper all from the comfort of mom's basement. Compare that with the intrinsic security of the '74 Ford Pinto - entirely immune to theft, even if left in the worst part of town with the doors unlocked and keys in the ignition.
This tangent brought to you by the Coalition for Reductio Ad Absurdum.
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.