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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.
I drive a crappy old car that cannot be started with a key fob signal. You can't steal my car!
That's nothing, mine has a manual transmission..... NOBODY will be able to steal my car, maybe the stuff in it, but NOT the car, at least without a tow truck..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
...car theft. Once autonomous cars are perfected, thieves can remotely start the target car and have it drive itself into a Faraday caged trailer. The vehicle pulling the trailer will be autonomous too.
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.