Is Allan keyless, or clueless? OR, To fob, or not to fob, that is the question!

I wrote an article a few days ago about keyless car locks and got a lot of mail including two which we should look at to clear up any confusion.

This was part of the article;

When you hit the lock button on your car upon exiting...it does not send the security code, but if you walk away and use the door lock on your key chain - it sends the code through the airwaves where it can be stolen.

Something totally new to us...and real.

Automobile remote keyless entry systems (RKE) were introduced in the 1980s. They've proved to be a big hit, making it easier for the grocery-laden to unlock their cars and sparing many of the terminally forgetful from finding they've left their keys in the ignitions of their now-locked cars or their purses on the seats of same.

The next day I got these two letters:

-Allan; According to Snopes: It is theoretically possible for a very determined thief armed with the right technology and the ability to manipulate it correctly to snatch a keycode from the air and use it to enter a vehicle.

However, the complexity and length of time involved in that process means your typical crook can't simply grab an RKE code in a parking lot and open up the corresponding car within a minute or two: the would-be thief would need specialized knowledge and equipment and would have to spend hours (if not days) crunching data and replicating a device to produce the correct entry code, then hope he could locate the same vehicle again once all the other steps had been completed.
-Yellow Tiger (aka Scaredy Cat) *formerly known as nancy

-Dear Mr. Janssen, I always try to research claims made in emails such as this one ("How to Lock Your Car and Why") before I send it on to friends and family.

If proper research is not conducted, false claims can circulate as truth.

I try to keep in mind that as a user of the Internet I have a responsibility much like that of a journalist, i.e. "check the facts".

I find it highly irresponsible of any individual to not follow the rules of journalism when dealing on the Internet.

My husband, a noted high energy particle physicist who works at CERN (the physicists who created the "http" language that we use on the World Wide Web)http://public.web.cern.ch/public chuckled ever so slightly when he read this article ("How to Lock Your Car and Why") voicing the same opinion as I did above.

Please check the science of the information you are sending out onto the web before you send it, so it's not full of false, and in this case, outdated information.

Please read what snopes.com actually had to say about this and you will see why it is so important for us all to use the web responsibly. http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/lockcode.asp.

Thank you for your time.
Alice Bednarchik

P.S. I still believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy and all those good little things, but let's keep things in perspective, eh?

Yes, dear readers, Nancy was right, in that you can't pull that stunt with today's keyless entry systems since they changed it about ten years ago to prevent this problem.

And as for Alice, apart from her slightly condescending attitude, I would like to remind her that this is not a newspaper and I am not a journalist.

I just write a blog that appeals to every people's sense of entertainment and/or outrage!

Plus, I would bet that her husband is chuckling, since it was a guy called Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA who is an English computer scientist and MIT professor who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web on 25 December, 1990!

P.S. I cleaned up her grammar and punctuation a bit too!

As for our more mundane keyless entry system, here is the poop from snoop:

The earliest RKE systems were quite vulnerable to the sort of attack described in the warning e-mails quoted above.

Their RF transmitters (usually built into key fobs) sent unique identifying codes that could be picked off by 'code grabbers,' devices that recorded the codes sent out when drivers pushed buttons on their remote key fobs to lock or unlock their cars.

However, times change and technology advances.

In response to the fixed code security weakness, automakers shifted from RKEs with fixed codes to systems employing rolling random codes.

These codes change every time a given RKE system is used to lock or unlock car doors and thus renders 'code grabbers' ineffective.

That form of more robust code system became the industry standard for remote keyless entry systems in the mid-1990s, so automobiles newer than that are not vulnerable to being quickly and easily opened by criminals armed with code grabbers.

Thanks to these two ladies we now know that the type of thievery described in the article is not possible any longer and I thank them for bringing this to our attention.

Your humble author;
Allan W Janssen

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-Allan; This is quite true. It is a shame that the banking industry hasn't changed as rapidly as the auto industry. In many areas, it is still possible to capture the WiFi data transmitted by an ATM when you swipe your card and enter your PIN. I never use an ATM if I can see someone sitting in a car within 100 feet.
Walker Bennett, SF Author


-Allan; I hope never to sound condisending. I know that you write a blog and not for a newspaper, but sometimes these little articles (perhaps not this one in particular) get around with no one checking the facts and people go off the deep end ... OMG the world is coming to an end I can't lock my car door without feeling safe anymore. My father sends me stuff all the time that he gets in e-mail and I have to gently remind him not to believe everything he reads on the web.I really do enjoy reading your articles, I do not always comment, and I don't always agree. But they do give me something to think about and sometimes something to research just to see if its true or not.
Yellow Tiger (aka Scaredy Cat) *formerlly known as nancy☺,

-Dear Former; I love hearing from you and keep those cards and letters coming!
Allan

-LOL Great article!
Kimber L.,

-Allan, Didn't she say her husband helped create the html language, not the world wide web?
Barbara M.

-Barbara; I don't think so, but I just didn't like the tone of her voice!
Allan

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E ! and as a paperback H E R E !

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com