Thousands of keyless cars can be hacked: Here’s how

Keyless cars made by Audi, Ford, BMW, Honda, Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota can be hacked with ease

Keyless cars might provide convenience to their owners, but according to a group of security engineers from the German automobile club ADAC, you should really think twice before investing in one. According to these security engineers, 24 different car models have been hacked by them and all of them featured keyless locking systems.

Because of this vulnerability, these engineers believe that hundreds of thousands of vehicles are vulnerable, and although more models could be at risk than the ones they tested, they were successfully able to unlike automobiles from manufacturers such as Audi, Ford, BMW, Honda, Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota and others.

This hack is being called an ‘amplification attack,’ and what it does it by using a custom device to find a car’s key at a distance and amplify its internal range so that it can reach the car from wherever the owner has stored it. Afterwards, hackers can get right in, and open the lock of your car without having its original keys with them.

Before, you had to invest in thousands of dollars in order to make this amplification attack possible, but the German engineers have been able to make this happen with just $225.

Computers and sensors are slowly being incorporated into auto manufacturing, with digital systems playing a bigger role every year. However, when cars can be controlled by the internet, it actually poses a more severe threat to the owner of these vehicles because if a hacker got access to these systems, the threat to human life would be direct.

There is a video given below of how keyless car can be hijacked in order to give you a better idea of what you will be up against after you have invested in such a vehicle.

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