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Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

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Re: Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

#331

Post by xenihn »

This seems like as good a HN thread as any to ask this, since I've been looking into it recently. What are some cars to look into if I'm interested in the following things? Or what are some cars that I should specifically avoid?

- Low appeal to thieves interested in stealing the vehicle itself, due to the hardware (locks and whatever else) being exceptionally difficult to deal with

- Some sort of secure/hidden compartment for concealing valuables (I know, I know, don't keep anything valuable in your car, but let's say it will still be more secure than keeping it outside of the car)

- Following up to that, an especially secure trunk (if such a thing exists)

- A wagon or smaller, so no minivans/crossovers or anything bigger

- Under $25k used for something recent, maintainable (was looking at Audis but I don't want to risk maintenance issues), and with low mileage, which puts Teslas out of the picture (sadly)

Re: Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

#332

Post by starbeast »

figers wrote: post #162
nkrisc wrote: post #105

I imagine improvements to the key fob could be made that would require a mechanical coupling with the car in order to start it. That would circumvent this attack.

My Tesla requires a pin to drive like a phone

How do you get it to not drive like a phone?

Re: Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

#333

Post by jwcacces »

burtonator wrote: post #296
jamescostian wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is a joke about old keys being better, but I'd argue you could have the benefits of new keys and old keys combined if you just made it so that new keys have to be inserted into some compartment inside of cars, where they are authenticated by those cars. You can imagine a fob with a USB that has a different authentication code than the wireless one it sends out, and unless the USB is plugged into…

I'm not sure why we can't have some sort of challenge response protocol to prevent MITM...

The key fob does use challenge-response, the thief just uses a glorified range-extender to get the car started with the key normally out of range. The car stays on once started. There's no MITM involved.

Re: Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

#335

Post by starbeast »

nkrisc wrote: post #105

I imagine improvements to the key fob could be made that would require a mechanical coupling with the car in order to start it. That would circumvent this attack.

Lock receives signal from Key, writes down time and picks a random key and uses these to create a ciphertext, encrypts that with the public key of Key to create a second ciphertext and sends. Key receives message, decrypts with private key to first ciphertext and encrypts that with the public key of Lock and sends back. Lock decrypts message with private key and earlier random key, compares to current time and if it has taken more than a set time period does not unlock.

The clock has to be pretty fast, but you can get a secure time of flight measurement, so you can absolutely know the distance of the radio signal path.

Re: Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

#336

Post by [deleted] »

caf wrote: post #322
tyingq wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An timeout that goes into idle mode until it detects some movement, would be less hassle. It still leaves a small window of opportunity for abuse, but seems like a decent middle ground.

Yes, a MEMS accelerometer would be a very cheap mitigation.

[deleted]

Re: Thieves boosting signal from key fobs inside homes to steal vehicles

#340

Post by [deleted] »

ce4 wrote: post #329
nkrisc wrote: post #105

I imagine improvements to the key fob could be made that would require a mechanical coupling with the car in order to start it. That would circumvent this attack.

Key fobs inside a home have one property: They are laying on a desk or in a drawer and are not being touched/moved for extended periods. Maybe a simple mems step counter could help activate them for a short period of n seconds/minutes.

[deleted]
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