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Comment by AlfeG | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why author think that it hard to steal modern cars. This IS a billion bucks business. Car part prices are high as never. Why not some person to buy replacements from shady market?

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Because the car engine won't run without a computer, the ECU, telling the spark plugs when to fire (among other things), the ECU won't do that without establishing that some cryptographically secure element is within sniffing range, and in my experience as a computer programmer over many decades it's hard enough to get a computer to do the correct thing when it's cooperating. If it actively trying to get in your way, go around it, or under it, indeed anything other than trying to persuade it to be helpful.

FYI, for well over a decade now even plain looking keys that you put in a lock and turn have some RFID thing inside of them the car authenticates against, before it will cooperate. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32826625117.html

Still, you may have a point. It don't know what it's like in the USA, but in Australia this has lead to a corrosponding up tick in home break & enters. Since the car can't be stolen without the key by doing anything less than towing it away, they steal the keys. Regularly.

There are manual input codes on many cars for disabling those systems. Honda was worried a few years back for a big leak exposing the codes by vin where you do a sequence of brake pedal presses and turn signal switches and such to disable it so you can just pick the lock or use a cut key.

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