How safe is keyless entry

By Lawrence Minnie

Almost every single motor vehicle manufacturer has some form of keyless entry available on its models. The system is not foolproof and a recent video doing the rounds on social media depicts a gang of thieves stealing a car from a driveway in less than 60 seconds.

By using a series of signal hackers to first detect and capture the signal from the key fob in the house and then relaying that signal to another device near the vehicle outside, the thieves were able to start the car and drive away without the key.

In a study done last year it was found that almost all manufacturers had a vehicle that was prone to this type of attack in their model line-up, 110 cars from 27 different manufacturers were found to be at risk.

This is, however, not the manufacturers fault ,as the thieves are becoming more and more sophisticated as the technology advances, as soon as a new anti theft device makes its way into the vehicle, the thieves find new and ingenious ways to circumvent these measures.

All is not lost though, as the signal hacking devices previously mentioned are relatively expensive and are not easy to come by in South Africa, and keyless entry remains a safe option for us.

Of all the manufacturers contacted, we received more or less the same response in that they are aware of the issue and are committed to constantly staying one step ahead of the criminals, and instituting new technology to battle the thieves.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage]