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Comment by shakow | Hacker News Reader

Crazy idea – what if we just got back to physical keys for car?

Simple, cheap, ecological, durable – what's not to love?

I hated the idea of push button start and wireless keyfob; until I got one. Now I feel put out every time I have to dig my keychain out of my pocket.

I’ve had wireless hire cars. Horrible things, never sure where they key is and tend to come with “features” like automatically locking and setting the alarm if you walk away from the car

And then they unlock automatically when you walk back to them. Much more convenient than having to manually fumble for the lock and unlock buttons. Not sure what the problem is here!

Alarm goes off as the car isn’t empty

Never had this happen in my experience. Sounds like an issue with an aftermarket alarm?

Park at a convenience store. Go in to get a coffee. Leave friends in car. Friend decides they want a coffee too. They open the door-- car alarm goes off. I'm sure some cars are better programmed but this has happened to me in several cars. (For the record, I still prefer keyless!)

Having a keyfob at all seems awkward and old-fashioned after driving a Tesla. Same goes for the start/stop button.

Crazy idea – what if we just got back to physical keys for car?

At any point did you stop and ask yourself, "I wonder why they put that fence there?"

Simple, cheap, ecological, durable – what's not to love?

What's not to love is the part where even a random HN user who hasn't professionally worked on cars in over 30 years could probably be driving down the road in your car before your dog even barks. Go ask some (probably former) Kia and Hyundai owners.

And did the guy who worked in cars for over 30 years heard about keys with chips?

So, you're bringing computing machinery into this? Then we're not really talking about physical keys anymore, are we? Sounds like we're talking key exchange, immobilizers, and all kinds of stuff beyond simply "physical keys".

Do you mean physical keys before the advent of immobilizers? Go ask Kia or Hyundai how well that works for preventing your car being stolen.

Meanwhile, the wafer locks used for car keys to allow them to be used "upside down" unlike your house keys are super easy to pick, because wafers are inherently flexible and the tolerances have to be lax.

Rolling code key fobs and immobilizers are actually the most secure cars have ever been, and made it way harder to steal cars in general right up until two brands wanted to save 100$ per car and ALSO design them in the most stupid way possible (the raw key cylinder is easily accessible and manipulatible to anyone with a rock, compared to other brands that bury the cylinder itself deep into the steering column so it's protected).

We don't need any new law, we just need Kia and Hyundai punished for cheaping out on important security features.

If Ford tomorrow replaced all keys with a button with no security, would you want to ban fingers? The fingers aren't actually the problem here.

Hyundai learned this pretty recently. Physical keys are insufficient to prevent casual theft of vehicles. Even a properly designed ignition cylinder retention system is no match to someone with a fence and a drill.

Canada also makes transponder keys mandatory, because it's just too easy otherwise.

For one, we never quite managed to convince people that the wiggly bits of metal were an important secret that should not be photographed. Cryptography can in principle be harder to duplicate/impersonate. (If, and big if, it's implemented correctly)

Making duplicate keys from a photo is almost entirely an academic exercise. Criminals break locks much more quickly by using force.

Por que no los dos?

I mean - why don't we just integrate the dongle signal being necessary to unlock the car into the existing process and still require a physical key. As a bonus the key could be designed to interface with the car to communicate any signing tokens over a wired connection in the key socket instead of having any radio/wireless capabilities at all.

That’s been the way in the U.K. for 30 years - power runs into the key, chip in the key of some level of cryptography is used to decode.

Same in the US.

I think physical keys are considerably less secure. Car thefts have been on the upswing for the past few years, but the rates are still much, much lower than they used to be when cars with physical-only locks were common.

Cars with keys only are much easier to steal. You just have to break the physical barrier and and twist the keyhole in the column, for example, rather than dick around with a device. I guess it depends what type of criminal you are.

I lost the key for my 1997 micra once. no way it was starting without overriding the chip in the key, had to be towed to a dealer to reprogram it.

Most vehicles already have a physical key as a backup to open the door. The alarm will go off if you do this and the RFID in the keyfob is still required to start it up.

The fact that you effectively need two keys to steal the car is more secure.

I hate to burst your bubble but there's almost no physically keyed lock systems that are meaningfully secure and of the lock types that are difficult, none of them are featured in cars as far as I'm aware and employing those types of lock in cars is probably more expensive than what's currently being done.

See Lockpicking Lawyer popping many car lock types in these videos. If he wasn't trying to show and tell on a video, most of these car locks would just take a few seconds in skilled hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVZ67dcY9_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8fbxN3Z5e8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1MMT08A9kY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRZ2YXlZV-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtkNQSk9xRU

Physical keys combined with [actually] secure electronic or radio combinations are still your best bet, though Kia and Hyundai felt like they could save a buck by not doing that. But even still, if the user can trivially or quickly unlock something, there's a good chance the design constraints will force a compromise that weakens security.

> I hate to burst your bubble but there's almost no physically keyed lock systems that are meaningfully secure

That's obviously the same for FOBs, except that you don't even need to hide yourself to fraudulently open the lock, as you can do everything hidden a couple meters away.

Security (especially as it relates to stealing an entire vehicle) and convenience.

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