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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

news.umich.edu

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Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#311

Post by totoglazer »

ModernMech wrote: post #254
DanHulton wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's all well and good, but maybe introspect here for a second? You're upset that your accomplishments aren't being respected, immediately after discounting the accomplishments of others. The point is that your car's modifications and the university's are similar, but different, particularly in scale and broad robustness, which adds difficulty in ways you may not be appreciating. $1.2 million may sound like a l…

$1.2 million will fund 4 years of research for 2 professors, and 2 PhD students. It’s not exactly a career making grant.

No way. Half goes to overhead. 600k/4 people/4years = 38k/person/year.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#312

Post by olyjohn »

memetomancer wrote: post #143
K0balt wrote: post #84

1.2 million grant for this? Now I’ve seen grift, but come on. I want to hire their grant writer. Literally a relay in the starter lead. This looks like one of my afternoon projects, and I’m not even joking. I have a 1990s montero diesel and it leaks power, and I often forget to disconnect the terminal. So I bought a relay from AliExpress (same one shown in this photo but one size up) and hooked it up with an esp32 an…

This is a frustrating yet common sort of take. Yes, this is simple, as the article clearly points out. Yes it is obvious in retrospect. But did you do anything with your brilliant work besides bodge your terrible car a few more miles down the road? There is value to developing the entire system... to ensuring the keypad mechanism is reasonably robust and tamper proof. There is value to understanding the vehicle as a…

That's the problem with the whole concept. Anybody can build a shockingly simple kill switch for $5 and a 5 video on YouTube. What are they trying to bring to market exactly? Cars have been around for 100 years and there have been hundreds if not thousands of these things brought to production during that time. They're all junk, they all fail and flop.

And great if you thing that those voltage fluctuations are gonna be consistent. Eventually some switch will corrode and then the person's wiper switch won't fluctuate the voltage properly. Nobody will want to reset their clocks using this every time they get in the car. Your break-in alarm won't work with the battery disconnectred. Car manufacturers will be pissed that you're disconnecting the battery because they can't get your telemetry and the car can't update while you're not int it. And then when you have problems, this will be the first thing ripped out of the car by your mechanic. This whole concept is flawed, and anybody with basic car or electronics knowledge will stay away from this thing because they can do it themselves.

And here's the kicker... anybody who doesn't have basic knowledge won't be hooking this thing up to their battery. They are terrified of even touching the battery. Congratulations on your marketing BS, but it's clearly not thought out from a common sense perspective at all.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#313

Post by shadowtree »

Way better would be a system of sliding metal panels to cover the windows when parked. Most break ins here in SF just smash and grab your shit.

Give me a way to protect the inside of the car.

Plus the fact that neither SFPD nor Oakland deploy decoy cars to actually go after the thieves - what a total failure of basic policing this area is. Can I get a 10mil grant to propose that!?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#314

Post by rocqua »

gruez wrote: post #170
oxfordmale wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a classical mechanical key? I am referring to a laser cut key, the type that can't be easily lock picked, other than in Hollywood movies. The problem is relay theft, where thief's relay the signal of your fob key inside the house to the car via a simple antenna and amplifier system. Cryptographically signing won't help. However, this can be fixed by adding a motion sensor that makes key fobs go into a slee…

> What about a classical mechanical key? can be picked >The problem is relay theft, where thief's relay the signal of your fob key inside the house to the car via a simple antenna and amplifier system. Cryptographical signing won't help. AFAIK the attack you describe only applies to keyless entry systems (ie. you can open and start a car without having to pull your key out), which is related but not the same as an im…

The modern versions of these keys cannot be cloned, they are challenge response. So you need to relay the challenge from the key, and then relay the response from the key back to the car.

This is often used by thiefs who bring the relay close to the front door, hoping for the keys to be in a bowl or a hook near the door. Then they can open and start the car using the relay. The car then won't turn off when it loses connection to the key (because that is dangerous) which allows stealing of the car.

There are cases where this was done over much larger distance, but those attacks are more easily defeated by having tighter tollerances on the latency of the reply. The latency tollerance does not do much for the 'keys near the front-door' attack, which is what the 'stationary keys do not reply' solution is aimed at.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#315

Post by jeron »

toomim wrote: post #62
jeron wrote: post #25

I simply drive a manual - ultimate theft deterrent these days

Not true. My manual civic was stolen 5 times in 5 years. Car thieves learn how to break into various makes and models of cars and hotwire them. They have also figured out this thing called a "clutch".

in the last 5 years? thieves these days are young kids who have never seen three pedals

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#316

Post by pmontra »

brk wrote: post #212
memetomancer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a frustrating yet common sort of take. Yes, this is simple, as the article clearly points out. Yes it is obvious in retrospect. But did you do anything with your brilliant work besides bodge your terrible car a few more miles down the road? There is value to developing the entire system... to ensuring the keypad mechanism is reasonably robust and tamper proof. There is value to understanding the vehicle as a…

It is obvious in retrospect because this concept has been around for 30 years. A common killswitch mechanism that I remember being implemented in the early 90's was a system that tied into accessory devices. On my friends car you had to put the key to ACC, then turn the cruise control on and off, and then engage and disengage the parking brake before the car would start. No other obvious lights, buttons, switches, et…

My father disconnected the distributor (correct word?) and took a piece of it with him. Definitely a killswitch. That was in the 70s. Cars got more complicated around 1980.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#318

Post by alexchamberlain »

Kerrick wrote: post #247

My grandfather invented, marketed, and maybe patented a device on this premise before he died decades ago. I still have one in its retail packaging in my curio cabinet. IIRC the first iteration he made used a keypad to enter the code, and the second used the blinkers. https://web.archive.org/web/20010206124335/http://www.kapinn...

So they've spent $1.2million to develop a pre-patented device?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#319

Post by ke88y »

matsemann wrote: post #92
constantly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valets HATE this one weird trick

Huh, never considered valet parking to actually be a real thing. Isn't it annoying having to wait for someone to drive your car? I'd almost pay more not to have to do it.

It's common in denser cities, primarily with two applications:

1. at parking garages so that cars can be double- or triple-parked. This is by far the most common use case for valets today. At these lots, you actually do have to pay more (or arrive early) for a spot that doesn't require valet parking.

2. at high-end restaurants or other similar venues where there is no immediately nearby parking and limited or no street parking. The valet drives the car to a lot or garage a few blocks away and returns it to you when they are done. You can almost always opt out of these, although you may or may not save money by doing so and at some places it can be worth it to just pay up and deal with the inconvienance because the nearest parking is a bit far.

I've also seen it as a weird status symbol thing in cases where it's entirely unnecessary, primarily used by people who have never had to put up with #1 or #2. Think up-scale hotels but located where parking is extremely ample. I think that only exists because there's a general impression outside of super-dense cities that valets are a "fancy" thing because they are only really common in "fancy big cities". (Which, to be fair, owning a car in midtown definitely makes a person fancy in some sense even if I'd never ency that person :p)

But actually, for the most part, valets are not a fancy optional service. They are mostly a non-optional service that you have to pay more or go to significant inconvenience to not use.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#320

Post by balder1991 »

vkou wrote: post #226
rhaway84773 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And despite being around for 30+ years it’s not broadly adopted despite a significant rise in car thefts.

Is there actually a significant rise in car thefts? Or did we just hit an acute rise in car thefts of two particular models, caused by the discovery (Well, publication, really) that they are still using 30-year-old security?

Another question you can ask is was there any incentive before to not report car thefts?
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