All Cars, All the Time

Keyless Entry? How About Any Key Entry?

It's hard to find a car that doesn't have a remote fob to open its doors. Now researchers in researchers in Israel and Belgium have found a shortcut that would allow a thief to almost immediately decipher a key fob's transmission and create a master key. This is all possible because most keyless entry systems use an encryption system developed in the 1980s: back when we had Commodore 64s in our homes. The system, called KeeLoq doesn't prevent brute force attacks, so an attacker could spend a few days attacking security systems (only about 30 minutes of access per system is needed) to build up a repertoire of known master keys. Then it's off to the shopping mall, where the thief armed with a master key could park a car with listening devices and eavesdrop on every car as a driver parks, walks away, and pushes their key to lock the doors. Within seconds, the transmission could be intercepted, analyzed, paired with information about a known master key and used to pop the locks. Although your car wouldn't necessarily be stolen, it would be picked clean of GPS units, radar detectors, iPods, purses, etc.

Full "Red Tape Chronicles" article here.