Ramblings of an old Doc

 

An interesting finding was made by Houston (go TX!) leos.

They saw car thieves break into and steal a 2010 Jeep Wrangler and steal it from the owner’s drive way.

No big news…except that the thieves plugged a laptop into the car…and accessed its computer and probably married up a generic ‘key’ to disarm the car’s alarm system and start it up.

“We don’t know what he is exactly doing with the laptop, but my guess is he is tapping into the car’s computer and marrying it with a key he may already have with him so he can start the car.” – WSJ

Apparently this is a new trend…since the NICB (National Insurance Crime Bureau) has reported thefts by “mystery electronic devices”.

How you defend against this is beyond me…only older/antique cars are without computers to hack.

And speaking about hacking, if you have a smart watch, don’t use it to do anything financial or requiring personal data. They are eminently hackable, it appears.

So, there’s your cheery news for Saturday, folks…happy motoring.

Sources:

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/07/08/thieves-using-laptops-to-hack-into-and-steal-cars/


Comments
on Jul 09, 2016

A few are doing it now, but manufacturers need to make vehicles that you cannot open anything on from outside the car unless you have the key, period.

on Jul 09, 2016

I'm so glad I don't have a car. Jeez!

on Jul 09, 2016

Wait until they start hacking them while you're driving down the road.

on Jul 09, 2016

I strongly suspect that's already happened.  I'll leave it to your imagination who might want to employ technology in that way.

[/tfh]

on Jul 09, 2016

To get access to the OBD terminal in the car, they have to get inside, it's under the dash. Odds are, the Jeep, like many newer cars, had a so-called smartkey system they needed to override. Easy enough to combat this tactic.

1: ALWAYS lock your doors and have the windows all the way up; (A somewhat iffy option on the ragtop Jeeps or one with cloth doors. #2 can still cover you there.)

2: Install a quality motion sensitive alarm system. The louder the better.

3: Have a hidden kill switch installed somewhere in an unlikely, out of sight location.

Happy motoring

(Alternate method, buy a BIG f'ing dog and tie him to the car or keep him inside it.)

on Jul 09, 2016

Wiz if you watch the video you can see the lights flashing so I'm guessing that the horn was blowing too.

On a side note, always cover your face so no one knows who you are. 

on Jul 09, 2016

You do NOT need physical access to the car to hack it. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs This is a hack of last year, so i hope that the demonstrated security hole has been fixed in the mean time.

What is worse is that the documentation for adding both physical keyfob (aka marrying them) and remote access keys (think license keys) are widely publicly available and the procedures are ridiculously easy. They are even demonstrated on youtube, talk about making it easy for potential thieves.

And one of the procedures for adding a new physical keyfob to the pool of stored authorized keys only takes about 3 seconds. After which you simply can lock the car and then unlock it with the newly married key, after which the alarm will shut off because you have unlocked the car with a valid key; and off you go - with the car.

Does anyone believe the police will be called for a car of which the alarm has been sounding for such a short period? Even the owner or the neighbours will probably think it was just a false alarm.

And even when the bugs in the security system are reported, the reaction is not to fix it, but to bury the existance of it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201564/Hackers-reveal-flaw-100-cars-kept-secret-Volkwagen-TWO-YEARS-Bug-used-unlock-Kia-Lamborghini.html

Even when they 'fix' it, it is only implemented in the newly build models and never retrofitted in the already sold cars. If those cars are stolen, to bad for their owners. The manufacturers / car salesmen have your money and they are not going to spend a single cent of it to prevent your car from getting stolen because they made a faulty / vulnerable product in the past.

on Jul 10, 2016

I keep seeing that headline and thinking, "Stripper drills?  Nah, just a lapdance."

Sick puppy, me.