Hacker News Reader

Comment by k_os | Hacker News Reader

I find it very funny that for such expensive cars there are no security considerations.

I hope to god those contactless credit cards can't be just cloned with a long range rfid reader or else this is gonna be a very funny few years

View on HN

The wealthier you are the better neighborhoods you live and work in, and arguably the better police and government benefits you get.

I'd park a Porsche with a vulnerable system in a fancy suburb or in a high-rise parking garage without a second thought. I wouldn't park a Chevy in the ghetto with any system without lots of worry.

Well that's what the two kids in the article were hoping for. Los Feliz is pretty affluent and trendy.

A Mazda3 and a Prius are such expensive cars?

Depends on where you live. 20k for a car where I live is very expensive. I honestly would not risk even a 5k car on this broken system, is it that hard to put a key in a hole?

Most cars I see on the road and in parking lots are 5-20 years old. Anything newer is a low-end model. Expensive cars stand out.

OTOH, by definition, most cars are going to be 5-20 years old.

I bought my Prius used for much less than 20k, and it has this system. (And when you buy a used car, you don't choose what features you get!)

Relative to the second hand market? Yeah. Unless you want something that is going to be absolutely no bother, and that doesn't need anything at all done to it, then you can spend a few thousand pounds at most and still get something in reasonable nick. For instance, my current car came with around 17,000 miles on the clock and cost £1,300.

A Prius would cost me £21,995 - around 16 times as much. Though there are far more expensive cars out there, that they can't even get basic security right is fairly disgraceful....

Minor nitpick: new cars are not without bother. It's just that when (not if) something breaks, you don't pay for the repairs. But you still have to go through the hassle of taking it to the garage, driving a rental in the meantime, etc.

And if you take depreciation into account, you can do a bloody lot of repairs on a used car before it's more expensive than a new one with free repairs.

I think the more accurate statement is: cars are expensive.

Any car theft will hurt a lot for most people.

I roll around in a 15 year old Saab 93 which has a book price of around 300 quid. A Mazda 3 or a Prius would be expensive to me.

They can, and so can the passports with the same technology.

Someone did a demo where they snagged someone's private details by "bumping into" them on the street.

>I hope to god those contactless credit cards can't be just cloned with a long range rfid reader or else this is gonna be a very funny few years

They can. That's why they require your PIN every N tries (N is configurable by the issuer, I think). All the money spent up to and until N is reached is just lost though, I guess.

This is why I have an RFID-blocking wallet.

I believe they can, and people are already selling RFID-proof wallets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com