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Comment by rhaway84773 | Hacker News Reader

And despite being around for 30+ years it’s not broadly adopted despite a significant rise in car thefts.

Is there actually a significant rise in car thefts? Or did we just hit an acute rise in car thefts of two particular models, caused by the discovery (Well, publication, really) that they are still using 30-year-old security?

Good question, it seems like car theft is on the rise, yes. And it’s spiking in particular metro areas (Milwaukee, Chicago) more than average, although national trends are also up.

https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CCJ%E2%80...

In California, if youre car is stolen and then found, the cops will give you a fat ticket and tow your car and then give you a ticket for it getting towed. Somehow getting the car towed is also a ticket.

Yep. Shameless re-victimization.

Moving illegally parked cars for the myriad reasons it is necessary is completely understandable. The fuckery, though, is beyond the pale. It should be a fine of the cost of doing business of moving your piece and not a penny more. Instead it's a racket

Another question you can ask is was there any incentive before to not report car thefts?

A salient issue has been that Hyundai/KIA didn't implement any anti-theft mechanisms on certain models, and recently the details about how to steal these cars has become popular knowledge, and now people who own the affected models can't even get insurance on them.

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.

I would say because of how it must be installed, and that it is probably not common knowledge. In my country, it is not unheard of, but I hadn't heard of it until my electrician mentioned seeing one on a car he worked on recently. I asked if he can install one for me, and he said he doesn't know how, nor did he know the name of the person that installed the one on the other car.

In some countries, it is.

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