Better Understanding How Secure Your Key FOB Really Is

Hey Folks,

As any computer security expert will tell you there's always plenty of ways to hack into a system and it's not cost effective to guard against all of them. A secure system means the designer has closed all the easiest obvious holes, and some less obvious ones, but not the more challenging ones that are likely too time consuming for a hacker to bother with.

Such is the case of today's post at Hack-a-Day: Hacking Rolling Code Keyfobs Aside from the secondary RFID system having to also be spoofed for this idea to work on a Prius there are also lots of comments at the end of the article regarding other reasons as to why this idea won't work for anything other than perhaps a really old garage door opener...

To be clear, I share this link because it's a great way to better understand how someone could potentially break in but it's by no means a 'how-to' break in if you were a intermediate or slightly advanced criminal. Thus you pretty much never see news stories about people's cars being stolen with spoofed FOBS. That however does not mean your FOB is entirely secure forever... Perhaps in the rapidly approaching future of software defined radios we'll be forced to return to a mechanical key. Of course most locksmith's are trained in how to pick those as well.