Has Volkswagen become the most vulnerable car brand?
JOBURG – Security researchers have discovered how to hack into the remote entry system of practically all Volkswagen models.
Volkswagen (VW) drivers worldwide now own the most vulnerable car brand, thanks to an invention by a team of security researchers, which is able to unlock every VW that was sold, since 1995.
According to a report by Wired , a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham, as well as the German engineering firm, Kasper and Oswald, will reveal the two attacks that affect the VW remote entry system, at the Usenix Security Symposium in Austin, Texas.
The Wired article continued to state that attacks by a resourceful criminal could be carried on vehicles in the VW group, such as Audi and Škoda. One of the attacks even affects other brands, such as Alfa Romeo, Citroën, Fiat, Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, and Peugeot.
Both potential attacks work on the basic principles of using an easily purchased and inexpensive piece of radio equipment that intercepts signals from the victim’s key fob and clones it, to create a hacker key.
However, the car thieves would have to be around 91 metres from the car to pick up the signal and there is not a universal key fob for all Volkswagen vehicles, which makes the hack more difficult.
Although it is possible for reverse engineering to reveal which internal components need to be extracted to create a hacker key fob.
Only the most recent VW Golf 7 and others – that share its locking system – are immune to these attacks as the cars have been designed to use unique keys.
The researchers wrote that VW has acknowledged these vulnerabilities.
