It has something called a 'manufacturer key', which needs to be available to any device that allows field pairing of remotes. If that manufacturer key is known, it only takes two samples from an authenticator to determine the sequence key.
Absent the manufacturer key, jamming+replay attacks work, but brute forcing a sequence key is generally prohibitively costly.
However, since any receiver that supports field programming needs the magic "manufacturer key", one could purchase such a unit, and may be able to extract said key.
As long as you have two-way wireless communication (which any keyless entry/start system does), then you can simply do a Diffie-Hellman key exchange during the pairing process.
Diffie-Hellman is designed for exactly this usecase, allowing two parties to derive a shared secret key over a public channel without exposing it.
If someone does successfully MITM while walking by the key is going to stop working as soon as they are out of range, and you will notice.
I'm just wanting a system that could be implemented with the hardware that's already there. I guess you could use the RFID chip that most keyless start cars already have as a secondary channel. Still Not 100% secure, but the MITM device would need to be physically in your car to intercept the pairing request, and at that point you have bigger problems.
While I worry that it's not really secure enough, the OP was suggesting that physical contact is a way to "prove" that you are indeed eligible to pair, by excluding everyone who lacks physical contact.
You need to press buttons inside the car, buttons on the currently paired key (to prove possession of that) and buttons on the key you want to pair with.
So a passer by would have to press a button on their fob at just the right moment. Then when you go to test your new key fob, it wouldn't work, so you would pair again until it was your key that was paired.
Whatever the case, making it easier to pair, shouldn't be the primary focus, no need to help a thief doing it quickly. It would just be nice to have a way to do it, that didn't ultimately require the manufacturer to get involved; but that does remove a big hurdle for thieves, too.
that sounds pretty clear to me that the connection isn't the human holding both buttons here.
A one-time out of band authentication (usually some form of trusted physical interaction) is key if you don’t want to trust intermediaries.
KeeLoq is also used for garage door openers.
Some KeeLoq receivers have a "learning mode" where it adds the next KeeLoq transmitter it hears provided it uses the same manufacturer key.
Learn mode is activated either with a button often on the PCB or with a "master" transmitter.
The old approach of keyfob to unlock the car and a real key for the ignition is safer.
Having multiple levels of security is good.
However, having worked in the car security industry many years ago, I discovered that car manufacturers actually like it when their customer's cars are stolen - Insurance payouts often result in another sale.
Generally, long range key fob button functions and the short range start release functions are separated, both intentionally for security reasons and due to the different problem space occupied by each.
It’s also worth noting that European makes in general tend to have much better cryptographic key security. My understanding is that this is due to a combination of regulation, a relationship between insurance and automakers which requires some security standard, and a high rate of theft leading to an adversarial environment.
>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.
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?
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.
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.
Almost everyone?
It's one of the best feature I have in a car, the most convenient one.
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.
https://www.krqe.com/news/crime/teen-given-max-sentence-afte...
I’m sure there is brand damage from people hearing that a particular car is frequently stolen, because having your car stolen as a pain. I am skeptical the analysis reaches deeper than this first level tho.
Hyundai and Kia have joined the chat
However, that wouldn't help with the "desyncing" or unlocking aspects of this attack.
It was a circular key below the steering wheel.
Not every problem needs a tech solution.
Of course, they wrapped it in some nerdy terminology, which IMO obscures the intent of their suggestion.
Isn't it the same for old style key, but with even more actions? Like to navigate a keyhole, turn the key...
So a bad person can just open your door and attack you because you can’t lock your door when your key is inside?
My Camry has incar fob detection and I can definitely lock the car while the fob is inside.
It’s especially nice when the key is my phone. I never have to worry about keys. I just get in my car and drive, and when I arrive I get out. I keep a key card in my wallet as a backup in case my phone explodes.
Adding in a stick of metal that can be trivially bypassed does nothing to make the car more secure.
Everyone can use a flipper zero to unlock a car. Not everyone can hotwire a car. Keyless ignition means criminals have a vastly larger recruitment pool of people they can offer money to do something stupid (like stealing a car for them).
ok, if you mean a key that has a chip embedded, where the key cuts are just window dressing and the real magic is still in cryptographic proof of "something you have". i am not aware of any such key ever being produced, but i certainly do not have comprehensive knowledge. GM had something close to that.
If it an electrical contact in the door handle, it would be very difficult for anyone to monitor or inject other signals.
If the signals were audible sound, you'd know when someone was jamming it.
In practice, my number one use of a fob from a remote distance is locking, rather than unlocking, and those two operations don't have the equivalent security risk.
Wouldn't the risk be the same if the same rolling code keys was used for both locking and unlocking?
I would be surprised if automotive manufacturers used separate rolling code keys for locking and unlocking.
Yes, what I meant is that such symmetry is not strictly required, and breaking the symmetry opens up ways to enhance security (of unlocking when you arrive) while keeping most of the convenience (of locking while leaving.)
For example, imagine "Lock" is a typical broadcast from anywhere within X meters, but "Unlock" requires touching the fob to an infrared port, and they use independent codes.
If I don't press the buttons on my keyfob am I safe from this?
The only keyfob functionality I normally use is that when it is outside the car but within about a meter of the door handle the door can be locked or unlocked by pressing a button on the door handle.
I don't know the details of the attack in the article, but my speculation would be that it would be vulnerable.
I always wonder about this: what is the consequence of that? Can the user reset it, or does it have to be done by a retailer or something?
And there were a few years this seemed onerous, but most of the time, there were popular attack in use by car thieves that were prevented (or at least made much longer and more complicated) by this.
Take the car while they are in the store.
The real cost will be in the software validation and road safety hardening, but there's no reason why the ROM size should be limited to kilobytes.
You can implement full passkey cryptography on a basic esp32 (https://github.com/polhenarejos/pico-fido). Cut out the cruft and you can definitely get a similarly secure algorithm on an actual car key or key receiver.
And honestly, with cars now unlocking over Bluetooth and WiFi, standardising that process to something like FIDO wouldn't even be that awful of an idea. It certainly beats the "we can do cryptography at home" many car manufacturers seem to be going for.
Currently sitting in a control room at a greenfield manufacturing facility trying to describe why even VLANning the control network would be a good idea to some controls engineers who want a plant-wide subnet for all PLCs that will be remotely supported by 6 different vendors. The struggle is real
They were asked what their exposure would be if someone walked into a datacenter and used their phone to disable all the airconditioning systems.
Saves money on password management.
On the other hand, it's been a great excuse for a hobby project with 12V relays and learning how to write code for an ESP32. :P
I still haven't yet figured out which CAN-bus to tap and which undocumented byte-messages to interpret... but entering the Konami Code on the steering wheel to unlock the ignition is quite plausible. Or an NFC/RFID tag over a hidden reader, or an active bluetooth connection to my phone, etc.
Whatever the case, quite enough to stop the average thief that would target a cheaper vehicle like my own. You could also skip the ESP32, and have a purely analog switch tucked away.
The left, right, left, right part I can see, but surely up, up, down, down, would be difficult on most steering wheels :)
Good idea, don't know how effective it is in reality.
I cannot think of a better word to describe the process. The ritual may involve some chanting. Thank you for that :D
This is why YubiKeys will only ever work for people technical enough to understand them. Normies will loose it at the first chance, and then be locked out of everything. At that point, YubiKeys will be banned by Congress from all of the people writing in demanding something be done about their own inabilities to not be an ID10T
The only reason they use KeeLoq (with whopping 32 bits of security!) instead of something normal, like I dunno, AES-128 or something, is because they are trying to save $0.50 in parts on the item they sell for $100. Oh, and because they don't like any change and don't have organizational ability to use anything recent, like other poster says.
Ironically proper security in this case would likely improve the user experience as well. The car provides a 64 bit (or larger) secret value and you manually program a standardized fob with it. No need for custom parts that are only available from the dealer.
Even if it's a problem with off-the-shelf stuff, I imagine a car-manufacturer could easily get something all nice and tiny and special-purpose.
Airtags transmit much more frequently than car remotes, use similar batteries, and yet do proper security.
I've become a big believer in leveraging some security features of the physical world, as it seems it's been long enough that everyone's forgetting Therac-25-style problems. (Or, perhaps more accurately, nobody cares because they aren't liable.)
Modern keyfobs actually detect motion and if they are motionless for a while, they stop transmitting the signal to both save battery and prevent such attacks.
For old keyfobs, you can get a battery sleeve with integrated motion sensor which does the same (cuts power when fob is not in motion for a while).
Alternatively, some cars let you disable the feature and just use the keyfob as you would use an older one - then you habe to push the button anytime you want to unlock the car.
Ha! DVDs at least had 48 bits. /s
If you're doing the "fingerprints implemented as a webcam" or software based facial recognition from a shitty webcam, you're risking quick and easy bypasses. Still good enough for a computer you leave at home (as long as you don't need to protect yourself against shady law enforcement) but definitely not that secure.
From what I've been able to gather online, nobody but Apple and phone manufactures seem to care much about actually doing biometrics securely, including the biometrics hardware companies. It's such a shame because it's definitely possible to do better.
The real question is "why are most people and companies incapable of using cryptography properly?"; and the answer is that doing cryptography right is hard, especially if your use case isn't a common one.
Then anytime you misplace your keys, you can look at a map on your phone and it will show you where to go.
The map thing when you're nearby and it goes into the sonar-like mode is super cool. Especially combined with the ping noise.
You won't be able to do this for instance with VAG cars that have KESSY. First of all the immobilizer is paired to the key, secondly the only way to pair a new key to it is via the manufacturer or a licensed dealership because you need a blob from their central server. But the consequence is that people feel like they are being fleeced when they need another key, because it can cost you hundreds of dollars to pair one.
In general these types of attacks are much harder in Europe where immobilizers have a legal minimum standard that manufacturers have to meet. On the other hand in the US immobilizer are entirely optional, which has famously led to KIA and Hyundai cars shipping without them and the Kia Boys TikTok phenomenon.
Because the ARE being fleeced. It's an artificial dependency on the vendor on the one hand versus a blatantly insecure approach on the other.
Secure pairing that can be done by the end user isn't rocket science.
I don't think anyone will be surprised if the security is swiss cheese once you pop the hood open or bust a headlight out. Keep in mind that a brick to the window and tearing up the center console will get you physical access to the head unit on most vehicles.
The principle issue is that requiring two way communication greatly increases hardware cost and lowers range/reliability. You also would prefer to minimize or eliminate any volitile storage on the devices.
Also you very much want to absolutely minimize the data sent, both for battery life and range/reliability reasons.
And whatever volatile storage the devices have you need to have some way of handling it being reset when its lost due to a dead battery or replaced device.
So standard replay resistant protocols like "door sends a random challenge, fob signs/decrypts/encrypts it and sends the result" are excluded due to the two-way requirement.
The next obvious set is along the lines of "device sends an encrypted counter, door enforces that the counter only goes up" requires nonvol storage in both devices, and then gets tripped up when the fobs counter goes back down due to being reset. (also harder to implement multiple fobs, as they each need unique state).
Two way communication and a few KiB of nonvolatile storage on the fob shouldn't be a deal breaker when an ESP32 dev board runs under $10 (an ESP32 being massive overkill for the described use case).
The device sending an encrypted counter is also trivially easy. There's no reason a modern vehicle can't store hundreds (or thousands, or tens of thousands ...) of { u64 fob_id, u64 fob_key, u64 fob_counter } triplets. Push it up to 128 bits if you're paranoid, it won't have a meaningful impact on resource usage.
Case in point regarding the car storing state, the (broken) rolling window algorithm they use requires that the car track the window and accept presses that are out of sync by a decently wide margin. That's likely more complicated and resource intensive than simply enforcing that the nonce only ever goes up.
The rational conclusion is that the manufacturers are either incompetent or malicious. I firmly conclude the latter given that the fobs they offer that are actually secure introduce vendor lock in and a charge to replace a key.
Mercedes used steel keys to avoid this.
No, it's not.
> The next obvious set is along the lines of "device sends an encrypted counter, door enforces that the counter only goes up"
That's already how rolling codes work. Running a strong crypto algorithm (even Ascon/Speck would be fine here) requires negligible power.
The issue is that this system is still susceptible to jam+replay attack. An attacker can jam the transmitter signal, while recording it at the same time. The user assumes that the button press just didn't register and tries again. The attacker also jams this and records the code. But then the attacker replays the _previous_ code that they stored, keeping the latest code for their future use.
This can _also_ be fixed with a simple capacitor-powered timer circuitry, charged during the keypress. The device can stay completely inert at all other times.
Things like key fobs are most likely very incremental changes on "this is the way we've always done it". These organizations are behemoths and steer with all of the inertia of a containership.
Also, glad I have one before they would ban it. It’s a neat tool that I have everything I want there, instead of having 4 fobs, one garage remote, plenty of IR remotes, it’s AIO. Plus I don’t have to pay fees to replace my lost fobs
Feels like getting rid of the light switches in your house in favor of "smart home" stuff.
Every time I start thinking about these little modern inconveniences, I re-arrive at the idea that this is yet another example of the difference between a product and a tool.
A product ideally works the same for everyone, with as little friction to the immediate function as possible. All other functions are hidden or deleted. Trying to use a product as a tool is slow and frustrating, because the experience never gets better than the first time you use it.
A tool on the other hand needs learning. Sometimes that learning curve is shallow and long, like a hammer, or steep and long like CAD.
Smart home stuff can be pretty great if you treat it like a tool, and only use it where it is the right tool for the job (so, not light switches).
Anyway, I prefer tools.
I also have a smart home ;)
Also, smart people wire their smart home so that the light switches still work. If a smart home controller or some other part of the system fails, people still want to be able to control the lights manually.
For this project let's say
AirTags and Tile Pro work fine wherever there are other people. They're not going to work in the Atacama.
They worked fine every time I used them. I recently sent a laptop to France and included one of each. Sometimes the Tile pinged and sometimes the AirTag pinged, but they worked really well across continents.
I also have about 4 of each in a vehicle left unattended for a while in a parking garage that doesn't have a great deal of people around it. And all of them ping at least once a day. The Tile Pros have ~100m LoS range which are quite a bit more than previous ones from years ago.
If I capture a lock signal, presumably I can instead prevent it from locking. The only real world malicious action I can see is being viable is to block the car lock, meaning the car is still in an unlocked state, open the boot (which I’m guessing can be done from the car dash anyway) then locking it afterwards?
Someone looking to break into your car will probably use a brick, not a flipper zero.
https://i.blackhat.com/USA-22/Thursday/US-22-Csikor-RollBack...
Suggests that it can be used to start a car. Whether it was a fob start or push start isnt specified.