Hi forum

 

Our Yeti had been "broken into" several times now without force. Each time, the car is left in a mess, nothing is taken as there is nothing of value to take (except for my Bob Dylan CDs and thankfully the thieves have no taste) and there is no damage, though sometimes one of the doors is not closed properly.

 

Now I'm pretty sure that the car has been locked on these occasions and we have the push button style key fob, so I would have thought it's immune to "relay theft" (whereby the key fob signal can be picked up by a device near to the fob, e.g. just inside your home and then "relayed" back to the car by a transmitter - works on fobs that don't have a button but just need to be near the car, hence not button operated fobs ).

 

So I'm wondering how the crooks are managing to do this, and if anyone else has experienced this and/or knows how to prevent it?

 

Thanks!

If you keep your keys in a pocket then its possible for it to unlock itself.

Several times I have heard mine unlock when I have been working nearby due to the button being pushed by another key whilst in my pocket. The range on my key fob is about 50yards.....

That's worth bearing in mind thanks.

FWIW, my brothers VW Caddy van was found like this a few months ago.  No sign of forced entry but it was unlocked with the door partially opened.  His missus was sure something wasn't quite right as earlier that night she had looked outside to see the red interior light flashing on the door panel but before going to bed she rechecked and the light was no longer flashing. 

 

Thinking that she was losing her marbles she asked her neighbour to also check their cars.  Both of their cars were also found to be unlocked with the doors left slightly open. They were adamant the cars had been locked. One car is a Golf and the other IIRC is a Fiesta.   When they contacted the Police they were told that where they live has been targeted by a gang, with high value/high performance cars being stolen and anything they don't fancy stealing is checked for valuables which have been left inside or returned to later on and stolen.  Luckily my brother was away at the time and his car is a Porsche Macan which I bet they would have taken and as a double stroke of luck one of his other neighbours is local CID and they tried it with his car so the police responded quickly and also stayed in the area for a few days after.  

 

My brother thought she had just forget to close the car properly but they then found their two security lights had been purposefully smashed.  

The doors not being properly closed is indicative of an intruder not wanting to draw attention to him/herself by the sound of a door being "clunked" shut....  would also account for the messed up interior,  which would not happen if the door had been inadvertently unlocked by squashing the keys in your pocket.

The wife takes the dog out for a walk at 19:30 every night an quiet often tells me to lock the car as the flashing light on drivers door not flashing.
I take it as above I catch the unlock button on the fob but if not opened within 30 seconds it should relock so I have no idea what is happening.

I was just about to add that the doors would relock if not opened. What I find more annoying, particularly in wet weather, is if I inadvertently give a long press on the button causing the windows to open. I understand that this feature can be turned off using VCDS, but have never got round to getting it done.

A potential other thought - are you sure the car was actually locked, rather than you know you pressed the lock button?  It could be possible to interfere with the fob signal such that even though you push the lock button, the car doesn't get the signal and therefore doesn't lock.  You think it is locked and walk away, but the car is actually still unlocked (and will stay so).  They then pick their time to come back and help themselves.

 

I always listen for the clunk and look for the indicator flash to be sure it is actually locked.

21 minutes ago, weasley said:

A potential other thought - are you sure the car was actually locked, rather than you know you pressed the lock button?  It could be possible to interfere with the fob signal such that even though you push the lock button, the car doesn't get the signal and therefore doesn't lock.  You think it is locked and walk away, but the car is actually still unlocked (and will stay so).  They then pick their time to come back and help themselves.

 

I always listen for the clunk and look for the indicator flash to be sure it is actually locked.

 

That might explain how they were able to do a number of cars in the area - if they have a 'jammer' running somewhere they don't even need to be hanging around - leave it to 'jam' the lock signals and simply come back during the night and work down the street within the range of the jammer...

Thanks for your replies - I'm going to manually pull the door handle after locking from now on. Will let you know if it happens again after this.

 

Also I'm wondering, if the crooks are able to "read" your keycode when you press it - can they just keep coming back again and again to open your car? Maybe this is what's happenning?

I'm lucky I know and I'm not gloating but I have a garage where my car is always kept.

 

We've had similar incidents along our road over the last few years but in some cases the vehicles were left out on the drive when they could have been put in a garage.

 

I'm lazy at times and have been known to leave the car out rather than put it away until I took the decision to have a remote control roller shutter door fitted to the garage, probably the only big spend I've ever made that I've never once regretted. I open the door as I'm driving down the road and when I've reversed onto the drive it's already wide open.

Out of curiosity, where did you buy your car from and did it come with a spare key?

 

A work colleague bought a second hand car from a seemingly reputable lot and had it stolen from his drive a few weeks later. CCTV footage showed the "burglar" walking up to the car, unlocking it (the lights flashed) and just driving off with what we presume was ether a spare key or a dummy key.

10 minutes ago, WolfyWesty said:

Out of curiosity, where did you buy your car from and did it come with a spare key?

 

A work colleague bought a second hand car from a seemingly reputable lot and had it stolen from his drive a few weeks later. CCTV footage showed the "burglar" walking up to the car, unlocking it (the lights flashed) and just driving off with what we presume was ether a spare key or a dummy key.

Bought secondhand via ebay, miles away but have the two key fobs

I realise that this is no help, but I am surprised by the number of people who shut their car door and walk away whilst clicking their key at arms length behind them, without checking that the system has correctly responded to the click.

I have always felt a bit over-fussy whilst checking a door or boot lock, but this posting has encouraged me.

Yes will be doing the same from now on.

If one person forgot to lock the car and someone went trying doors that's unlucky, If it happened to a few on the same road then I'd be amazed if they all forgot to lock them the same day. Some ****** is overcoming the security one way or another, and electronics would be the obvious conclusion if the vehicles are all different makes and models. 

3 hours ago, Jelnet said:

Also I'm wondering, if the crooks are able to "read" your keycode when you press it - can they just keep coming back again and again to open your car?

 

AIUI the Thatcham Category 1 standard requires that the key fob sends a different code each time the button is pressed.  Thatcham themselves call it a "random code" but it can't be truly random, otherwise the ECU wouldn't be able to validate it.  In fact the code is pseudo-random, and the key and the ECU use the same algorithm and seed values.  They also have a way to get back in sync if for some reason they drift apart e.g. you press the button on the fob if you're out of range of the car.  Basically, at any time the ECU will respond to a limited number of upcoming valid pseudo-random codes sent by the fob, within a reasonable range which allows the ECU to have missed few key presses (but in which the same pseudo-random code cannot appear twice).

 

Bottom line: simply capturing and replaying a key fob's last transmission should not cause the ECU to unlock the car.

 

Caveat: no security system is 100% foolproof.

Edited 23 January, 20206 yr by ejstubbs
Added caveat

About 10 years ago I attended a course where one of the lectures  given was by a guy who's job was to return stolen-recovered vehicles. He started it was suspected by the team investigating the break-ins and thefts that some of the vehicles had been stolen due to criminals being able to somehow manipulate the remote central locking signal to leave a door (or doors) unlocked. As most people either don't check their vehicles are locked or only check the drivers door, they had a high probability rate of gaining access to the vehicle. 

 

Ever since then whenever I park up I go around and check all the doors in my vehicle are locked.

 

Even if the guy was talking out of his jacksey, it doesn't do any harm. And if I was unfortunate to have my my vehicle either stolen or broken into whilst parked on my drive  it will show quite clearly on my CCTV system me going around checking the doors.

5 hours ago, OldBoyScout said:

What I find more annoying, particularly in wet weather, is if I inadvertently give a long press on the button causing the windows to open.

 

If when locking that would only close the windows, have to hold the unlock to open them.

On my yeti I listen for the beep as the doors lock, if one door is open it doesn't peep so I know its not locked. Many have the beep disabled........

Me and the missus will be very careful to check doorhandles from now on and I'll keep a close eye and report back here if we get another break in. A lot of local people have reported the same issue on the Nextdoor website, so either there is some key fob hack out there or a lot of people are failing to lock their vehiculars.

I always check that the mirrors fold when I lock it. If they don't, either it's not locked or a window may be open......

18 hours ago, FirstAndLastSkoda said:

He started it was suspected by the team investigating the break-ins and thefts that some of the vehicles had been stolen due to criminals being able to somehow manipulate the remote central locking signal to leave a door (or doors) unlocked. As most people either don't check their vehicles are locked or only check the drivers door, they had a high probability rate of gaining access to the vehicle.

 

The risk of criminals using jammers on the radio frequency band used by remote key fobs (per skomaz' post earlier) was highlighted a number of years ago: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38225274

 

Quote

The transmitters, which are easy to buy online, can be used to interrupt signals from keys [sic] fobs, meaning unwary motorists believe their cars to be secure when they're anything but.

Relatively low-powered jammers can have a range of about 75m, meaning fairly large areas, such as a whole car park, can be affected at the same time.

 

The use of "random" codes is no defence against this since the signal from the fob never gets through and the car is never actually locked.  The equipment doesn't eavesdrop the signal from the fob, it just jams it.

Car remote locking systems mostly seem to use the same well known frequency band (around 433 MHz) and differ only in their coding.  So a jammer for this band can be used to target the majority of cars. It can use random noise, i.e. no codes needed, and simply blocks the receiver by "shouting louder" than the key fob.

 

If such a jammer is being used, locking your car from some distance away may be prevented.  However, if you shorten the distance between the key fob and the receiver (strictly speaking the antenna) in your car you will markedly increase the "wanted" signal strength and it becomes much more difficult for a would-be jammer to win the power race.  I don't know where the receiver is in the Yeti, but I would imagine under the plastic dashboard, which is transparent to radio waves. So best to keep the key close to this point when locking.  The chirp and flash of the indicators to confirm locking does have a use after all !

39 minutes ago, Austin 7 said:

The chirp and flash of the indicators to confirm locking does have a use after all !

I always listen/look out for the chirp and flash and I'd assume most do. Is it possible the jammer can jam even though the chirp and flash happens?