Home » More and more technological car thefts: everything you need to know to protect your car

More and more technological car thefts: everything you need to know to protect your car

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Stealing the car of Ethan Hunt, the protagonist of Mission Impossible, is the stuff of movies. Yet this is exactly what happened to Tom Cruise’s BMW, parked in the guarded garage of the Grand Hotel in Birmingham, under the nose of the actor’s bodyguard. Ironically, a theft committed with the most sophisticated technologies, the very ones that Ethan handles with confidence in his exploits …

Nothing strange though: according to police estimates, over 30% of modern car thefts today also occur thanks to technological devices, confirming the continuous transformation of this criminal business.

More and more technological thieves

The theft phenomenon is in fact constantly evolving. This is demonstrated by the “Annual Dossier on Car Theft”, prepared by LoJack Italia, a company of the CalAmp Group leader in telematics solutions for the Automotive and in the recovery of stolen vehicles, which collected and analyzed the data provided by the Ministry of the Interior and integrated them with those coming from national and international elaborations and reports. It turns out that car rats adapt quickly to new trends in the automotive market; today it is increasingly a strategic activity that is the prerogative of criminal organizations or well-structured gangs equipped with latest generation technological devices capable of opening and starting high-value cars, as well as small cars.

Two women and a baby: the car rats you don’t expect


The analysis

According to the LoJack analysis today in Italy the theft of cars and SUVs equipped with Intelligent (contactless key that allows the vehicle to be opened / closed at a short distance), is carried out thanks to the use of a technological device, able to mock the owner of the car in just 30 seconds, even when he feels he is safe.

In particular, there are two hi-tech modes most used by those who were once called “car mice” operating in Italy:

1. the re-programming of the key through the diagnostic socket

2. the duplication of the smart key signal: the “relay attack”

The first case

In relation to the first case, in the last five years the use of key programming equipment has gradually increased through the physical connection to the OBD on-board diagnostics port, also thanks to the wide availability of sabotage tools on the network and ineffective countermeasures. fielded by the car manufacturers. The thief forces the door in the traditional way to enter the passenger compartment, connects a device to the OBD port and thus has access to the confidential information of the transponder, easily obtaining a new key within a few seconds.

The second case

Equally effective with vehicles equipped with smart keys is the so-called “relay attack”, the second case we were talking about earlier. This happens because the intelligent keys allow you to access the passenger compartment of the car without having to first touch the key; the car in fact “warns”, through a low frequency radio wave generator, the presence of the owner in the vicinity and unlocks the doors, or closes them once the same moves away. When the remote control is close enough, an identification code is recognized by a receiver inside the car; this is the moment in which it is possible to detect the code, or it is possible to do so even when the smart key is not close to the car by activating the transmission of the code through specific devices used for sabotage.

The “relay attack” in fact works thanks to radio frequency repeaters: the thief can even at a distance of a few meters (even from outside the house) pick up the signal of the “electronic key” in the possession of the owner, make it “bounce” from his device up to that of his accomplice, positioned near the car to be stolen. The car is thus deceived and the protection systems reset.

The system requires the presence of two thieves (one near the key and the other near the car) and exploits the weaknesses of the manufacturers’ software. But to this new process of contactless theft has been added, more recently, a second even more incisive and dangerous which involves the use of powerful devices capable of remotely picking up the codes of the smart key, in some cases even exceeding the walls of the dwelling, and to store them for subsequent criminal use.

(reuters)

To hunt the thief

How to protect yourself? The first advice is to never keep the car key “free”, that is, keep it in a shielded bag (many are sold, even on Amazon), in this way the key no longer transmits codes and the car is Safe. But it must be said that in this case the keyless system stops being comfortable for motorists because obviously, every time to open and start the car you have to take the key out of the bag.

The second tip is to never leave the key in the classic bowl at the entrance of the house. In this case, the thief outside the door will not be able to “fish” the code of the key and then bounce it on his accomplice’s PC.

But there are also much more sophisticated techniques. That, for example, which allows – as in the legendary film by Alfred Hitchcock, To Catch a Thief – to overturn the roles between pursued and pursuers. In this case, it is the same cars, thanks to the newborn LoJack Premium Touch, that signal car mice. The system works thanks to the antennas scattered throughout the country that detect the radio frequency signal launched by the stolen car, but also on the new moving systems mounted on board the cars protected by LoJack, increasing the recovery speed of stolen cars equipped with the version of the Classic device (the one in which the customer realizes the theft and alerts the Operations Center) already in circulation. A precious ally for the LoJack security team that every day supports the Police Forces in the field in locating, recovering and returning the vehicle to the owner.

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