After the Volkswagen emissions ruckus, there now appears to be one more problem that could be headed its way. As reported by the Telegraph UK, Researchers at the University
of Birmingham have found not one, but two flaws in Volkswagen’s keyless entry software. Problem is that this flaw is not present in just one recent model made by the company but several models built by the German automotive giant since the 1990s. To put things into perspective, when put to use by wrong people, someone could be able to unlock millions of cars and just drive them away!
As mentioned above there are two ways to get into Volkswagen’s keyless entry software. All one needs to unlock the cars via radio, is a Rs 2500 control board with a radio receiver and you are good to go.
And now for the interesting bits. Using the first hack, drivers do not even need to be near the car or the owner (with the key) which is a commonly used technique in key fob attacks. The researchers at Birmingham somehow managed to reverse engineer a part of Volkswagen network and get hold of a cryptographic key. While how they managed to get the key is another topic of discussion altogether, turns out that the same key is shared with millions of Volkswagen cars. With the cryptographic key in hand, all that needs to be done is intercept the signal given out by the car’s key fob and then simply clone the required key, unlock the car and just drive it away. Researchers managed to hack into a car from a distance of 91m.
In the second technique, researchers simply used the radio device to rapidly read a string of coded signals given out by the driver’s key fob. All they needed to do next was to crack the cryptography and clone the needed key.
While this technique could possibly put millions of Volkswagen car owners out there at risk, the hack is not publicly available. So for now it is only a matter of time until someone finds the key and is able to unlock a long list of vehicles. In case you were wondering which car models does the hack apply to? Well, it works on Audi, Ford, Fiat, Skoda, Citroen and Peugeot models sold since 1995.
Now that researchers have figured out the hack, their next step is to find out if it has been used by criminals in the real world.
culled from tech firstpost.
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