261–270 of 325 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's likely the car has it's own always-on cellular connection.
Yeah, this is what I meant, but that sounds insane to me.
However, this is by no means secure where the car's ECU will happily dump its entire storage (including the SKC code) over the diagnostics port if you ask nicely.
Knowing that for thieves, the most precious resource is time and if you force them to work more than expected, they might gave up...
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That's actually not hard to explain to your insurance or the police at all. This happened to me 5 weeks ago. The car was parked directly in front of my entrance door and the key was basically on the other side of that door. The scene of my car not being where it was supposed to be was so surreal that I did not even realize it was missing the first time when I walked out the trash. I basically walked around an invisib…
> I was a bit worried that the box does not shield the signal enough. They make "Faraday Bags" exactly for this purpose.
Only "they" do not certify them in any way (for several reasons, including the fact that there is not - yet - an accepted standard for measurement) and in any case a Faraday bag (in the sense of a mesh) may be very effective at a given frequency and almost transparent to another one).
A tin box should always outperform a Faraday bag in shielding RF.
JFYI: https://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=3914/
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It'll go damn far - on a flatbed.
How do they move it onto the flatbed if the hand brake is on?
How else would a tow truck tow away a vehicle in gear or with the parking brake on?
Through there are stories of tow trucks towing away vehicles in 1st gear, things seem fine, and then the transmission causes a fire from overheating...
Reading this article is honestly a bit of a domestic culture shock for me, where does this guy live in The Netherlands? Here in downtown Amsterdam we called the police because the rear window of someone's car had just been smashed outside our office, and the police's response was "Has anyone been hurt? Nope? Then we're not coming". Meanwhile, wherever this guy lives they're sending officers because some BMW call cent…
I used to fix cars for a living. Sometimes it involved “cracking” alarm & immobiliser systems. My clients all claimed they broke/lost their keys to their car - most of the time they were believable (car stuck in front of their driveway, etc). Sometimes less so, but I’d do it anyway because I needed the money and I had no proof of the contrary (innocent until proven guilty right?), although given the sad conditions of…
New, expensive cars are stolen or broken into quite often. When broken into, they'll often rip out the infotainment, with high end cars this can be a five-figure repair.
Reading this article is honestly a bit of a domestic culture shock for me, where does this guy live in The Netherlands? Here in downtown Amsterdam we called the police because the rear window of someone's car had just been smashed outside our office, and the police's response was "Has anyone been hurt? Nope? Then we're not coming". Meanwhile, wherever this guy lives they're sending officers because some BMW call cent…
The key point isn't the BMW, it's the unspecified distress. Lives could literally be on the line, and a fast response might make a difference.
I used to fix cars for a living. Sometimes it involved “cracking” alarm & immobiliser systems. My clients all claimed they broke/lost their keys to their car - most of the time they were believable (car stuck in front of their driveway, etc). Sometimes less so, but I’d do it anyway because I needed the money and I had no proof of the contrary (innocent until proven guilty right?), although given the sad conditions of…
Wha? That may have been true about twenty years ago, but not now. BMW was using 256-bit RSA keys to validate ECU firmware and authenticate privileged access in the early 2000s (they're up to 1024-bit keys now) and write-once memory in their instrument clusters for about as long. Other (Euro) car makers using the same vendors offer similar features.
Once you have physical access all bets are off though. That's why the thieves cut the alarm sensors.
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Several years ago someone tried to climb into our apartment window in Amsterdam (with another guy waiting with a motorbike as getaway vehicle on the street). He was standing on the windowsill and tried to break open the window (it was open but we had one of those locks that limits how far the window opens, so he didn't fit through the gap). They fled once we noticed them. When we tried to report that incident to the…
Standing on someones windowsill isn't illegal?
Hi guys, very cool to see how this is being picked up over here. Shame on me, but I actually forgot to submit it to Hacker News. The key fob method is out of the question for my car. I've known about it for a while and store my keys in special bags. I see quite a few people asking why a sting wasn't organised. I of course shared the M.O. with the police and we actually had a few phone calls from them over the past fe…
Or just expose two data lines from the OBD wiring harness and jump them together. Remove the jumper to operationalize the OBD port.
FYI: cutting off VCC may not always work since some devices may derive enough power through other lines that have pull-up resistors to function. I’ve seen it happen in other industries.
Not sure if such products exist commercially, but it would have some value for someone to build them.