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Thieves Are Boosting the Signal From Key Fobs Inside Homes To Steal Vehicles (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: According to Markham automotive security specialist Jeff Bates, owner of Lockdown Security, wireless key fobs have a role to play in many recent car thefts, with thieves intercepting and rerouting their signals -- even from inside homes -- to open and steal cars. According to Bates, many of these thieves are using a method called "relay theft." Key fobs are constantly broadcasting a signal that communicates with a specific vehicle, he said, and when it comes into a close enough range, the vehicle will open and start. The thief will bring a device close to the home's door, close to where most keys are sitting, to boost the fob's signal. They leave another device near the vehicle, which receives the signal and opens the car. Many people don't realize it, Bates said, but the thieves don't need the fob in the car to drive it away. Bates says, if you have a key fob that can wirelessly unlock/start your car, you should not keep it by the front door.
"If you do live in a house, try to leave your keys either upstairs or ... as far away from the vehicle as possible," he said. "The other thing that you can do is there are products out there that you can put your key fob into," such as a faraday cage -- a box used to block radio signals -- a key pouch, which works similarly, or even a steel box.
"If you do live in a house, try to leave your keys either upstairs or ... as far away from the vehicle as possible," he said. "The other thing that you can do is there are products out there that you can put your key fob into," such as a faraday cage -- a box used to block radio signals -- a key pouch, which works similarly, or even a steel box.
"always broadcast a signal". They only do that when within the low-frequency radio signal generated by the car. They work much like RFID if you don't press a button on it. This is also really only usable on vehicles that don't use the standard "press a button to do something" fob. My 2011 Hyundai uses a standard fob like this; the 2018 Yukon XL I rented used the more modern type since it was a push-start.
Not all of us have garages - certainly not most folks in apartments, and even many homeowners (myself included). Plus, there are pretty cheap ways for thieves to hack electronic garage doors too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
William George
https://youtu.be/bR8RrmEizVg
It doesn't continuously emit. It's false information in the article. The fob listens constantly, and when it receives a valid query from the car, then it broadcasts a response. So when someone touches a door handle, for example, to unlock, the car broadcasts the challenge, and the fob then broadcasts the response. Same for pressing the start button.
The coin battery in the fob would die within days (if it even lasts that long) if it was constantly broadcasting.
So you are saying the article is wrong?
I'm not going to call BS, but I am going to ask for a citation on that... :)
The citation is the original TFA link from cbc. Scroll down a bit and look at the diagram which shows how it works. But common sense will tell you that a tiny coin battery in a key fob can't be broadcasting on a regular basis without going flat, whereas the large battery in a car can.
That statement is incorrect for the proximity fobs too. That would kill the battery in the fob. Anyone such a fob can easily test it.
Go stand next to your car. You probably won't hear it unlock.
Touch the door handle. You'll hear it unlock.
What's going on is:
The handle has a capacitive sensor to detect your hand.
When your hand is on the handle, the car sends an *inductive pulse.
The fob has a coil in it, which works like a transformer to catch the pulse from the car.
Note this pulse is more like a transformer than a radio.
When the fob is triggered by the inductive pulse, it sends a radio packet to the car.