A team of researchers from the COSIC research group at KU Leuven and from the University of Birmingham has discovered that a wide range of car models produced by Toyota, Kia and Hyundai use weak cryptographic keys. This makes it easy to clone the key fob transponder. It is likely that millions of cars are affected. Additionally, the research reveals how the second version of the Tesla Model S key fob could be easily cloned.
Movies often depict car theft using hot-wiring, where a few wires tucked away behind the dashboard are shorted together to start the vehicle. Modern cars implement an immobiliser to prevent unauthorised use of the car, which requires radio-frequency identification to be able to start the car. ...
