3rd Gen Wireless Key Fob Hacking

What an asshole...! Who in the F do you think will fall for your CRAP..??
If you shove the fob up yer asshole...it can't transmit a signal.., you'd be good, eh..? Push it as far as you can man..!!

 

You could always express your opinion as a review on the Amazon.... just saying.

 

Those are really cheap.... you guys should stock up on them.. they are bound to go up in value when the hackers hit your "hood"...

 

sometimes i hide my key in washing machine , even my wife can't find it . i am so proud.

 

I don't know how well the freezer works as a faraday cage at fob frequencies, BUT I can tell you that the Prius (so I assume the Tacoma?) fob is more robust than I was expecting. I dropped my wife's prius fob over the side of my boat at the dock, in salt water. It took me a few minutes to fish it out, and to my complete surprise it still works! That was several years ago and the fob still works great. There was a little rust on the battery when I had to replace the battery, but it's still operating fine. The important bits must be sealed up good.

 

Seems this isn't a conspiracy theory at all?

This was reported on the national news this am in Canada:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/toyota-lexus-relay-attack-1.5380947

 

The general attack has been around for a while and is well known. Quite a few thefts using this attack have been caught on home security video and played on the news, in my area anyway. Basically it's a fob range extender that is good enough to extend the range of the fob from inside your house to your car in the driveway. Or from the valet stand to the car in the parking lot, etc.. There's no cracking of codes or anything like that needed, it just relays the radio signal. So the only real solution is to hide the fob in something that doesn't allow radio signals to penetrate.

 

Seems we just can't have nice things...

What are some of the "boxes" people are using? Looking through Amazon they appear all hideous and tacky.

Will any metal tin work?

 

Skip the junk, start at 2:10:

https://youtu.be/D_3lgxMwrWI?t=129


And this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIveLwq0p5o

 

If the walls are mesh, the holes have to be smaller than 1/10 the wavelength to be blocked. So for most key fobs you're looking at a few mm. Or solid metal should also work in theory.

 

Yup, it needs to completely enclose the key fob with a shield blocking the radio waves, called a Faraday Cage. Toyota I think uses fobs in the 315 MHz spectrum so roughly a 95 cm wavelength. The best material and shape of the cage depends but practically it needs to be continuous metal or mesh without gaps. An ammo can, an Altoids tin, a metal cookie or candy tin, a box made with metal window screen or aluminum foil can work. There's also wallets and pouches made to block RFID or cell phones that should work, too.

 

It's a shame, but it's an example of the development team either not taking time to fully evaluate the risks of wireless systems when they developed the key fobs, or the bean counters not giving them the budget to deal with it appropriately. They were so focused on making the contents of the signal difficult to crack that they gave no attention to the fact that the signal could be blindly relayed or amplified. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, lets see if any of the manufacturers take it seriously and come up with actual solutions.

From a marketing perspective, they're in a tricky spot. More secure is typically more difficult to use, and easier to use is typically less secure. They want easy to use products so people buy them, unfortunately uneducated consumers are reinforcing bad designs by continuing to buy insecure products.

 

There was a punishment in the old days for horse thieves which may deter car thieves today.
Its called hanging.

 

They also sell wallets that have a mesh (used for passports) that you could drop your key into if you are that worried about it.

Alternatively, your microwave would work Just dont forget its in there.

 

I apologize preemptively in case my comment may have hurt the feelings of any snowflakes.

 

Boooooooo

 

Ok. Apology rescinded.

 

Yayyyyyy

 

I’d argue that the delicate snowflake is the one who advocates for a decidedly insane response to having his property taken. No thought given, just raw emotional ignorance.

Punishments need to be commensurate to the crime or the crime itself may have a more severe outcome than is otherwise necessary. It is for example why rape is not punishable by death, because if it had the same punishment as murder, why wouldn’t you just murder the person when you were done? There’s endless writing on this topic in legal textbooks.

not every idea should be said aloud, let it marinate next time