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Comment by nextlevelwizard | Hacker News Reader

I know this might be splitting hairs, but...

>The old approach of keyfob to unlock the car and a real key for the ignition is safer.

"Safe" feels like wrong word to use here. Safety is not same as security.

One could also argue that criminals being able to steal parked cars is safer over all for society as they then don't feel the need to car jack you while you are actually in the vehicle.

If you actually want to keep your car secure (meaning criminals wont break into it or steal it in this context) just drive old beater and do not leave anything valuable in the car or trunk. I am driving a car that is nearly as old as I am and its fighting a losing battle against rust and I have nothing more valuable than trash inside the car.

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> One could also argue that criminals being able to steal parked cars is safer over all for society as they then don't feel the need to car jack you while you are actually in the vehicle.

Here in the UK vehicle theft reached an all time low in 2014. It’s doubled since then. If there was an increase in car jacking it must have been minescule by comparison. It’s not really a crime that happens here.

I had an old beater van that got stolen. It turned out that model was known to be easy to steal. I suspect most car theft is done because it’s easy and fairly low risk. Walk up to a car in the night, fiddle around for a few minutes and drive off.

I still drive a car with a key. It’s completely fine. Who actually asked for keyless entry?

> Who actually asked for keyless entry?

Probably the vast majority of consumers?

There is no reason why keyless entry cannot be more secure than a physical key, other than incompetence.

The cars stolen in New Zealand are usually, as you say, cars that are known to be easy to enter and drive away. Even then, they break a window. But I have also heard of break-ins at night targeting certain high-end cars and going as far as gaining entry to a garage.

> I have also heard of break-ins at night targeting certain high-end cars and going as far as gaining entry to a garage

My next door neighbour had someone enter their home while they slept, take the key and drive off in their car, because it was "stolen to order" most likely.

I couldn't give a shit if someone breaks in to my garage, or frankly if the car is stolen, but I don't want them coming into my house where my family is asleep for the keys.

What happens if the keys weren't downstairs by the front door, because I left them on the bedside table or something?

I shudder at the thought.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying cars should be easier to steal so that no one ever breaks into your house to access the keys to your car?

Of course not, that's ridiculous. I simply don't drive a car anyone would want to steal.

Alarm and a gun in the home, problem solved.

> There is no reason why keyless entry cannot be more secure than a physical key, other than incompetence.

Isn't the problem that it's designed to work from a distance, and that by boosting the signal the criminals can just increase the distance so that the key inside your house reaches the car? It seems inherently less secure than the old system where the physical key has to be practically touching the ignition to disable the immobiliser.

You can boost signal only so much. Apple solved this to be less than a meter or smth like that.

With Tesla you can disable keyless entry and use key card if you are so paranoid. But stealing connected car doesn't make much sense to me.

> But stealing connected car doesn't make much sense to me.

How so? Even if you know the location you need someone with jurisdiction to go get it. You disable vehicle, then it gets destroyed.

EVs are entirely different designs than an ICE vehicle, and Tesla in particular is moving beyond the flawed CANBUS to something more robust and secure.

More modern implementations of this use a time of flight check, so unless you have the ability to violate the laws of physics, boosting the signal so that a far away key transmits its signal to a nearby car is insufficient to unlock/start the car.

Are there many car keys actually using time of flight in the fob? Most of the cars I’ve owned use a much simpler approach - the key sleeps (stops broadcasting) unless moved. Drives me nuts with some fobs which have to be vigorously shaken to start broadcasting again and open my car etc. if key isn’t broadcasting, it can’t be mitm’d. It’s been awhile but I seem to recall time of flight being patent encumbered vs sleeping the key.

This obviously isn’t 100 percent full proof but likely works well enough for preventing many common mitm scenarios such as stealing from a car park or drive way most of the time etc.

No idea on actual implementation, but the UWB keys these days all seem to be capable of it. Plenty of manufacturers advertise the capable, e.g., Bosch.

>> Who actually asked for keyless entry?

Almost everyone?

It's one of the best feature I have in a car, the most convenient one.

It's a feature we like now that we have it, but not one we asked for.

Hi! It me. I had a car with keyless entry years ago. It was great. I got another car, more recently, that had a physical key. I've hated having to use the physical key. I personally am asking for keyless entry. Sorry!

Also: Hyundai/Kia cars have physical keys and are known to be trivially hot-wired. Given the "kia boyz" I'd have a hard time moving to physical keys again. Again, sorry!

Time to get flipper zero. Realistically there is not reason some Android maker couldn't roll a phone out with a keyless entry support (with or without OEM blessing heh)

If I can unlock my car with my Android's NFC and drive - is it a keyless entry?

Is mentioned vulnerability affecting older/cheaper cars? I don't need to press any buttons on my key fob to enter the car and turn on the engine.

If you need to pull out phone - it’s not really keyless

Flipper Zero is just too thicc.

> Who actually asked for keyless entry?

Me. I have problems with short-term memory and I kept forgetting my keys in the ignition.

This isn’t due to laziness or lack of trying. It’s a hardware problem that makes developing or following habits in certain situations nearly impossible. It’s like asking a blind man to organize things by color.

Now that I don’t have to take my keys out of my pocket, I’ve never left them in my car.

I LOVED my Chevy Volt!! Walk up to the car, door unlocks and I climb in. When leaving the car, shut the door, walk away, doors lock.

I didn't ask for keyless entry, but I LOVE KEYLESS ENTRY!

Old beaters are exactly the things that get stolen. Their security can often be beaten with a butter knife or coat hanger. That's more about minimizing the losses, for which it's a useful approach. Running costs tend to be lower as there's little purchase price and no incentive to do expensive repairs instead of dumping a broken one for another running beater.

You should look up what strikers are and maybe check the statistics for most stolen cars.

If someone wants to stole the car they will steal it.

Stealing a car is not the same as stealing a candy. In Europe all parts are marked so it takes significant effort to sell or modify such cars. It's not like people steal them and then sell it at yard sales.

As for the "beaters": shortly after Russian invasion on Ukraine plenty of cars were stolen in Poland. Not the expensive kind but usually 10-30 years old cars with big and reliable engines (V6, V8). I know 6 people that had Jeeps Grand Cherokee stolen (different generations).

My uncle wanted to renovate Isuzu Rodeo with completely rusty frame but V6 engine of a value of like 300€ and it was stolen too.

And it happened ~1 month after it started.

People stealing cars to sell or chop them up for profit is less of a problem than people stealing cars so they can commit violent crimes with them.

Based on what data?

Based on the "data" of human lives being worth more than cars. WTF!

I'm probably completely missing the (presumably relatively common) scenarios you have in mind where stolen cars are used for violent crimes. (I'm assuming reckless joyriding isn't what you're referring to as "violent crime"; maybe that's my issue)

Happens in places like New Orleans. Some gang members steal a car, go shoot up a neighborhood, and ditch the car.

If you want to go commit a violent crime, and have motorized transport, and not be caught. Then it is helpful to have a vehicle that is not tied to you.

> I'm assuming reckless joyriding isn't what you're referring to as "violent crime"

It is, and worse. There have been numerous cases of scumbag teenager stealing cars and then crashing them into people, mostly by accident but often enough on purpose. They also use the cars for gangbanging shit since they know the car can't be traced back to them.

A lot of this stuff wouldn't be happening if cars weren't so easy to steal. There is a casual accessibility to stealing certain cars which makes it an easier crime to commit than carjacking (parked cars aren't witnesses, parked cars won't fight back or pull a gun of their own, parked cars won't try to run you over, etc.) Once the car is stolen, other impromptu violence seems and becomes easier.

Then why are you worried about cars, worry about murders.

That's like asking why people are concerned about easily available guns. Because they facilitate murders! Seriously, stop being deliberately obtuse.

Shouldn't we be more worried about nuclear weapons than guns, it's human lives after all.

Again with the deliberately obtuse routine.

What's wrong with that? If the rate that something happens doesn't matter, then we should ignore everything except for the most severe problem.

By "less of a problem" they don't mean "doesn't happen as much," they mean "doesn't matter as much."

How much does one happen vs the other?

I don't have an answer to that, I was just trying to clarify what read to me as a miscommunication.

> In Europe all parts are marked so it takes significant effort to sell or modify such cars. It's not like people steal them and then sell it at yard sales.

This is the same in the US, at least for the expensive parts. They won’t part it out or even sell it in your country, it gets shipped out to another country where your laws don’t apply.

Where I live, the ability for the "Kia Boys" to easily steal cars, really boosts their effectiveness at robbing people at gunpoint. Sprees of 20 people being robbed by the same group. It's not poor kids who lack school transporation options, doing their best to get by.

Strong disagree. Many car thefts are by POS teenagers who do it because it's easy and they can get away with it. They then proceed to drive those cars recklessly, endangering the lives of other people, or worse, use the sense of anonymity and power provided by the stolen car to commit violent crimes.

https://www.krqe.com/news/crime/teen-given-max-sentence-afte...

> One could also argue that

One could also argue that most people didn't bother because violent crimes are much more severely punished, now that the bar is so low people steal much more. And the stats would back it up

https://images.vivintcdn.com/global/Blog%202022/01-Number-of...

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