Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • December 15, 2004 6:34 AM

With regard to the car tracking system there are a number out there, however most of them have a three major deficiency when it comes to theft,

1, They have to be “activated” post theft.
2, They are all RF devices that have to work
known parts of the radio spectrum.
3, They are fitted to lots of cars.

Specialised car theft operatives are fully aware of 99% of the systems out there and all of their failings. After all it’s not difficult to find out, buy or rent a car with the tracking system you want to checkout in it, give the car a visual examination to look for antennas most are obvious (some like wing mirrors are not but the internal wiring gives them away 95% of the time), follow the leads back to the device and give it a good look over.

Then park the car up around the corner of the house next to a shed or other RF transparent building, and set up your equipment (RF SpecAn etc you can rent these from hire shops with a company credit card and faxed through headed order). Then report the car missing and wait, eventually the device will be activated and you can see what has happened in the RF spectrum around the car.

When the car gets found you appologise profusly and blaim it on a missunderstanding between you and the wife/girlfriend/children/whatever who borowed the car and parked it in the wrong place. The system operators are not particularly suspicious of this as it happens rather more than you might think.

You now have a lot of information on the tracking system, and also the response time from reporting the theft to activation. This gives you most of the information you need.

I susspect that it was taken away in an “eighteen wheeler” with an aluminium (not steel) cargo container of the type generally used for carrying frozen/chiled food. It would only take at most 20mins for a skilled operator to find all the known tracking systems and effectivly disable them by cutting the antenna power leads. (a pin stuck through the coax 1/4 wave from the tracking device would usually ensure it does not work again as the adverse VSWR is likly to damage the output device). If it is a “case emmiting” device (not likley on an armourd car) then drilling into it in the right place will stop it dead.

Also I suspect that the car was many many miles away before the tracking device was enabled, and probably out of the country within an hour or so and on it’s way to meet a cargo ship bound for Lagos or other well known major African cargo port, possibly with a client allready lined up.

As has been pointed out in the past there is no such thing as perfect security just levels, good locks and sensible parking will stop 80% of car theft, tracking devices will get back the cars stolen by the incompetent or “joy riders” as for top end high value cars hmm I am not sure that the cost of the tracking system is worth it (apart for the insurance discount) as the people who are set up to steal that kind of car are not going to be caught by a (known) tracking system.