100 Million Volkswagens Are Vulnerable to Hacking, Report Says

In the past year or so, researchers have initiated pretty scary hacks to demonstrate vulnerabilities in the Jeep Cherokee and Tesla Model S. But it turns out you don’t have to target major vehicle systems to present a huge security problem. Now, a group of security experts say that millions and millions of Volkswagen Group vehicles are prone to theft because a function as simple as the keyless entry system can be hacked.

In fact, most vehicles the automaker sold since 1995 are at risk, say researchers from the University of Birmingham in the U.K. To put that into perspective, the automaker sold almost 100 million cars between 2002 and 2015.

How does it work? Hackers can use a piece of radio hardware to intercept signals from a driver’s key fob. When a driver presses the key fob to open or lock their car, hackers can “eavesdrop” within 300 feet of the target vehicle and capture the signal needed to clone the key and gain access to the car. To make matters worse, you don’t need expensive equipment to perform the hack, just a radio and laptop or Arduino board with a radio receiver.

VW claims the current Golf, Passat, Tiguan, and Touran aren’t at risk. “This current vehicle generation is not afflicted by the problems described,” a VW spokesman told Automotive News. But VW wouldn’t elaborate on whether or not other models are affected. According to the researchers, the security flaw was found on a very recent vehicle, the 2016 Audi Q3.

Bear in mind this report focused on Volkswagen’s mass-market brands, and didn’t include Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, or Porsche. Cars that sit on VW’s newest MQB platform also didn’t seem to have the security issue, as evidenced by tests the researchers performed on the new Golf.

Click here for the full report.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription required), Wired

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