To start with I find (and always have) the idea of a remote for one’s car to be not only a silly concept for a very, very unsafe one. Means the car can be hacked, at least the door can be. Now with keyless ignition, it’s even worse. Break the basic code and you’re in.
To wit:
A friend just told me she was out in a local parking lot, pushed the button her car’s remote and the car beeped, as it’s supposed to. She went to where it beeped, opened the door and the person sitting there said, “wrong car.”(1)
It beeped a different car!
That’s not supposed to be possible.
I have been suspecting the keys are not as unique as we’ve been told. I keep trying to reverse engineer these keys, given the stated performance and qualities of them, and it’s very tough to figure. A shifting-antigen (so to speak) sort of security code that somehow stays in sync with the car’s expectation of the next code.(2)
I keep coming back to “no way.” Of course, I’m not a software encryption expert, hate the stuff, really. So maybe I’m missing something, but I am high-level software engineer and fairly creative at most things.
Regardless, that is serious. Wrong car?
I think we need to reverse car engineering back to the late 60’s and start over. This is just wrong.
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(1) And another problem with the remotes. Press the remote “your” car beeps, you don’t have to try to remember where you left it. Which means you become dependent upon the beep to locate your car, which means you’re not having to remember, which means you lose the ability to remember, which means… well, open the door on a car that isn’t even your own, just because it beeped. The problem with automation is that you become what’s automated. You become the one being told what to do. That is also not OK.
(2) All of which might be B.S. It’s what the various articles claim about how the keys work. But who knows how they “really” work?