Thieves ‘use a laptop’ to hack car keys and steal £35,000 Merc
THIEVES stole a £35,000 Mercedes from its owners’ driveway – after allegedly using a computer to hack a key fob sitting on the kitchen table.
The car had a ‘Keyless Go’ system, meaning it could be unlocked and started without the need for a physical key, as long as the fob was in the immediate vicinity.
Owners Paige Foster and Richard Haydon said the fob was stored at the back of their house, far from the driveway. But they believe the thieves managed to hack it to extend its reach.
CCTV footage from outside their home shows a man waving a satchel, possibly containing a laptop, up against a wall. Minutes later the car door opens and a second man gets in and drives it away.
Mercedes-Benz said it was not aware of any thefts related to its keyless systems. But the incident will alarm owners of such vehicles, which do not have traditional ignition keys and instead come with a plastic fob containing a computer chip and security code.
When the fob is nearby, the code is detected by the car’s central computer, allowing the driver to start the engine at the press of a button.
The technology has been developed for convenience and makers say it is more secure. But there have been a spate of thefts of luxury vehicles in recent years, with some criminals managing to reprogram blank keys.
In this latest incident, experts believe thieves may have amplified the signal emitted from the key to allow them to get into the car and drive away.
Miss Foster, 23, an estate agent from Grays, Essex, noticed the black Mercedes C220 was missing when she left to go to the gym at 9.30am on April 11. She said she and her partner – a 27-year-old plumbing and heating engineer – now think it was stolen to order, after learning that a background check was run on the car just days earlier.
Mercedes tried to help them trace it but its tracker appeared to have been deactivated. Miss Foster said she ‘burst into tears’ when she saw the CCTV footage.
‘It looks like the guy up against the house has an iPad or a lap- top ... it looks like they can decode the key to open the car,’ she added. ‘We have been told it’s some sort of Russian military software.’ A Mercedes-Benz spokesman said: ‘All [our] vehicles have extensive security and anti-theft protection systems ... We also offer our cus- tomers the option of deactivating the radio signal with two clicks of the key to prevent abuse.’ Essex Police is investigating the theft.