News, How Hackers Can Use Smart Keys To Steal Cars. (vehicle, 2011)
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Modern smart keys use radio frequencies to let drivers unlock and start a vehicle without fumbling with a key fob. Now European researchers have found such systems can be hacked, letting thieves easily steal your car.
As noted by comments at TPM and Jalopnik, cars are relatively easy to steal by brute force, with or without a fob. Having a smart key is just a new subset or effort for car thieves.
99.9% of car theives don't know what a Signal Generator or Down Mixing are, or how to amplify and filter a radio signal. A hammer, crowbar, or tow dolly are much simpler than the diagram displayed on the OP's link. Hackers/theives with the level of technicial expertise needed to break into a car using these means are going to target alarm systems that protect vaults and multi-million dolloars homes. Or they may just steal credit card numbers from the comfort of ther own home. A $30,000 vehicle is simply not worth their time.
There are essentially two types of car thieves, the thug, who steals old Hondas etc and sells it to a garage who takes it apart and sell the parts and then you have the professionals, who aren't necessarily even car thieves, but people who steal anything with high enough profits. These guys are usually pretty clever, have military backgrounds and know all the tricks of the trade.
I saw a youtube of a guy who broke into and drove away one of the Mercedes that "couldn't be stolen", it took him two minutes, as he said though, that's too long to stand around a door messing around with it, so what they did these days was wait for the driver and get the keys at gun point, far easier and made the car easier to sell too.
Point is: You can never protect your car from the latter group, if they want it. Thankfully, they're few and far between, never car with it's anti theft technology does repel the first group though, and they are far more normal to encounter.
I think peptide is incorrect. In Active Keyless Entry and Start, the fob code rolls over every time the key is pressed. Usually it is allowed 256 roll-overs before it becomes out of sync with the code in the door lock. The door lock itself, if it does not recognize the original code, will generate the next pseudo-random code in its sequence. It will do this a maximum of 256 times until either (a) it matches the fob code, or (b) it quits and the key can no longer unlock the door lock. In Passive Keyless Entry and Start, neither the fob code nor the door lock code roll over unless they have wireless contact. This prevents the fob code from continuously rolling over when it is out of contact with the door.
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