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Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious 'Black Box'

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Re: Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious 'Black Box'

#3

Anyone know how this is done? Maybe brute forcing the keyless entry? Maybe damaging the antenna/preamp with something high-powered would work if there's a fail safe feature to unlock the car in that event?

I've recently seen a presentation about attacks on a widely used system used in current cars.

There are a couple of different ways that are significantly better than brute force (as in: works against real cars in seconds to a few minutes). (Though since key length is only 48 bit, even brute forcing might be practical.)

This might interest you:

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...

Re: Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious 'Black Box'

#4

Anyone know how this is done? Maybe brute forcing the keyless entry? Maybe damaging the antenna/preamp with something high-powered would work if there's a fail safe feature to unlock the car in that event?

I'm pretty sure I've had this happen to me [1]: both my Chevy and Jeep were broken into on the same night without damage.

Knowing nothing about how it was done, I'd just assume the security was really bad [2] and the box simply emitted all possible combinations. Has any industry ever taken security seriously before the first major breach?

Our solution is to never store anything of value in the car.

[1] Pretty sure because almost never leave a car unlocked. Two cars unlocked is even more unlikely.

[2] By way of example, unlocking my Chevy with its fob routinely set off a car alarm for a different car. That tells you right there that the car alarm receiver has zero security.

Re: Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious 'Black Box'

#7
post #4

Anyone know how this is done? Maybe brute forcing the keyless entry? Maybe damaging the antenna/preamp with something high-powered would work if there's a fail safe feature to unlock the car in that event?

I'm pretty sure I've had this happen to me [1]: both my Chevy and Jeep were broken into on the same night without damage. Knowing nothing about how it was done, I'd just assume the security was really bad [2] and the box simply emitted all possible combinations. Has any industry ever taken security seriously before the first major breach? Our solution is to never store anything of value in the car. [1] Pretty sure be…

The typical attack in the past involves two devices, one by the car and one by the key. But that attack only works on proximity fobs for obvious reasons.

Re: Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious 'Black Box'

#9
I'm assuming automakers don't publish their specs for keyless entry for review? I'm sure they are relatively insecure, and they almost surely have backdoor codes known to thousands of individuals in each company and likely to several law enforcement agencies as well. Such info will inevitably be leaked. I'm honestly surprised we haven't already seen widespread hacking of keyless entry. Now that many cars do all their user authentication to wireless keyfobs, hotwiring's not even necessary if you can crack the protocol.

Re: Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious 'Black Box'

#10

  Gee, you guize! Oh noes, scarey people is 
  doing bad, bad tings, and let's all worry now!
  Police no can help! Meesuh gonna die now???
Is there a particular reason why the 5 o'clock news is dumbed down to non-verbal pre-schooler degrees of retardation? I mean this is like Barney The Purple Dinosaur "2 + 2 is 4" level informative.

  "...AND NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT IS!"
Bullshit. That is a fucking lie. What's the next segment going to be? Strange lights in the sky, and maybe they're space aliens? Thanks for nothing, "journalists."

Someone knows exactly what it is, and where it came from, and they're just not permitted to explain on public channels, because classified. This is just an all-points-bulletin to make sure an otherwise disinformed citizenry starts reporting on a type of crime that they might've been previously unfamiliar with.

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