Thousands of cars vulnerable to keyless theft, according to researchers - Telegraph.co.uk
Listening in twice allowed them to use a process of reverse engineering – using a commercially available computer programmer - to identify the secret codes used to start the car. "It isn't a theoretical weakness, it's an actual one and it doesn't cost theoretical dollars to fix, it costs actual dollars. The motoring giant said the work of Flavio Garcia, at Birmingham University, and his two Dutch colleagues could "allow someone, especially a sophisticated criminal gang with the right tools, to break the security and steal a car". In response, the researchers argued a publication ban denied the public crucial information about the security of their vehicles. Their paper, “Dismantling Megamos Crypto: Wirelessly Lockpicking a Vehicle Immobiliser”, describes how they began their research when police said they were baffled by rising numbers of “keyless car theft”. The paper concludes: “The implications of the attacks presented in this paper are especially serious for those vehicles with keyless ignition. At some point the mechanical key was removed from the vehicle but the cryptographic mechanisms were not strengthened to compensate. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
