This wasn't to foil thieves, it was to frustrate the repo man.
Yes, my dad was used to removing the rotor from the distributor (small piece, easy to pop off and unless the thief just happens to have the correct model handy, the car can't run) back in the 60s (maybe he did it earlier).
I'm pretty sure some form of this has been popular for just about as long cars have had an electrical system.
(/s)
The concept of a starter interrupter has been around almost as long as the automobile itself. Ways to engage and disengage that interrupter have evolved and advanced over the years. Older folks will remember cars with a keyswitch on the front fender, and then a keypad inside, and then hidden switches like I described in my OP, and then IR and RF remotes, and so forth.
The basic concept in the linked article is not very novel, IMO. The specific implementation is cute, and somewhat current in the sense of evolution of these systems. But the whole thing is as noteworthy as the next arm64 advancement.
^ this is where the value is, which is what the $1.2m is intended to explore.
No Bluetooth, but it does have a dedicated RF remote.
Edit: figured out the keywords I needed for the exact product you want “bluetooth immobilizer”
There are dozens of already existing products that are designed to do exactly this for pretty cheap.
https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CCJ%E2%80...
There's been some other exploits to infotainment systems, but AFAIK, they are all limited to proof of concepts. And the radio-repeater that almost works occasionally on some cars with wireless key access (better implementations have proximity detection which prevents this attack vector).
As it turns out, immobilizers are pretty damn effective.
If I owned an effected Hyundai/KIA, I'd do like we all did with 90s cars and put a killswitch in. It's not professional car thieves hitting the bulk of these cars, but mostly bored people showing of. So if YT can't show them what to do if the car won't start, they will go away.
That’s a cute trick, but if a current day equivalent is integrated into modern day cars (i.e. CANBUS-based), then the security is already defeated.
No one challenged the security of the “cruise control cheat code” of the 1990s simply because there were no devices small enough. The other bit is that criminals weren’t sophisticated enough.