4 ms·

That's interesting because there's been a rise recently in London where people plug a computer into a car to disable the alarm and start the engine.. http://ww

• mike_hearn 12y ago
  Immobilisers have absolutely slaughtered car theft (this is not news, I referenced this trend in a talk I gave a couple of years ago), but this makes them VERY vulnerable to being hacked. What's more most immobiliser systems are poorly engineered from a cryptographic perspective, for example, some can be overridden by simply telling the ECU to start up via a plugin cable, others are simply broadcasting static repeating codes meaning you can gather the codes with a fixed receiver in a car park and then go collect them later. When a sufficiently smart criminal starts making kits that let you hack immobilisers, theft of those models shoots up dramatically. BMW has suffered from this effect badly. Their engine security sucked and owners became magnets for car theft.