How hackers steal luxury cars in seconds
In this article, we are talking about a device that will allow racing drivers to enter the showrooms of luxury cars at the touch of a button.
Luxury cars, like everything else in this world, including sex toys, pacemakers, firearms, and power grids, can be hacked. But most people aren't hackers, so a device that can automatically hack into a car without a key, with just the push of a button, is becoming desirable for car thieves.
The so-called
"relay attack" it is ideal for an era of increasingly digitized vehicles and requires a so-called digital approach.
"Keyless repeater" or "repeater", which allows you to amplify the key signal to the selected car and eventually gain access to it. After that, everything is as simple as Wiz Khalifa once said in his famous song "Black & Yellow": "No keys, push to start".
Such a device is not an invention at all, it was sold over the Internet for several thousand dollars by a person under a pseudonym
«EvanConnect», who shared a video of the entire process with the publication's reporter
Motherboard By Joseph Cox.
It turns out that his device can be used specifically for hacking luxury cars. Read on to learn more about how it all works.
Below is a video that the device developer recorded to demonstrate how it works.
An unsuspecting man drove his jeep to an underground garage, locked it, and left, not even suspecting that two hackers were going to steal it silently right now.
One of them, along with a black laptop-sized device inside his bag, chased the victim. Using the buttons on the device's outer casing, he scrolled through various options on the device's bright led screen before settling on the right choice.
The second man was walking towards a bright white jeep, holding in his hands
a small box with an antenna sticking out from above. The man tried to open the car door, but it was locked. He pressed a button on the top of his phone.
devices the light came on, and voila, the car
it opened instantly. He climbed into the driver's seat and pressed the button to start the car.
To show the power of the device, the man turned off the box with the antenna and tried to start the car's engine again. "Key not detected," the dashboard screen read, indicating that the person in the driver's seat did not have the wireless dongle needed to start the car. "Click the button with the key to start".
Ignoring the message, the man turned on the device in his hand and tried to start the car again. As if nothing had happened, the engine
started up with a distinctive growl.
Sami Kamkar an experienced security researcher and hardware hacker watched Evan's video and explained the gist of this apparent attack. In most modern cars, the presence of a key as a physical device is not required (it does not need to be inserted or turned), it is enough to have it with you.
It all starts with the car owner locking up their car and leaving with the key. One of the people trying to steal the car then approaches it, holding one of the devices that listens to a certain low frequency that the car sends to check if the key is nearby, and then the device retransmits it "with a higher frequency for example, 2.4 GHz, which will easily cover much longer distances," Kamkar wrote.
The second device, which is in the possession of the second hacker, picks up this high-frequency signal and reproduces it again at the original low frequency. The real key sees this low frequency and reacts as if it were physically near the car.
Using these devices, the criminals create a bridge that connects the car to the key in the victim's pocket, making both think they are next to each other, allowing the criminals to open and start the car.
One of the men in the video, who goes by the pseudonym
"EvanConnect", plays the role of a bridge between digital and physical crimes. These devices, which he sells for
thousands of dollars, allow other people to break into expensive cars and steal them. He claims to have had clients in the US, UK, Australia and several countries in South America and Europe.
"Honestly, I can tell you that I've never stolen a car with my technology," Evan told Motherboard. "It's very easy to do, but I see it this way: why should I get my hands dirty if I can make money just by selling tools to other people."
The video doesn't depict the actual hijacking; Evan shot the video using a friend's jeep to demonstrate the device's capability to reporters. These devices are sometimes used by security researchers to test the security of vehicles.
Police departments around the world have reported an increase in the number of vehicle thefts over the past few years, which they suspect were committed using various electronic means. In a 2015 press release, the Toronto police service warned residents about a spike in thefts of
Toyota and
Lexus SUVs, apparently involving electronic devices.
In the video, 2017, published by the police the West Midlands in the UK, seen as the two men come to Mercedes-Benz parked in the driveway to the owner; and a video of Evan, one person stood close to the target vehicle with a portable device, while the other equipment placed near the house, hoping
to catch the signal coming from the car keys stored inside.
However, not all carjackings involving electronic devices use the same technology. Some methods are based on suppressing the signal from the vehicle owner's key FOB so that the owner thinks that he has closed his car, when in fact the closing signal did not reach it.
Based on Vice materials.
