Just A Word Of Warning

[local hero]

A young guy who lives 3 doors away from me has a Ford Focus XT40, at 2-40 am yesterday morning a loud bang was heard followed a few seconds later by a screech of tyres.. 3 young thugs had shone a torch thru his hall window spotted his keys on a radiator shelf then kicked in the centre panel of his UPVC front door grabbed the keys + driven off in his car, pretty frightening + now his youngest son aged 5 is understandably having nightmares + will not sleep on his own, The question is, do you hide your keys in which case these mental cases could threaten you, your wife, or your kids in order to take your car?

or do you leave them in-sight, wherebye they take your car and as in this case nobody gets (physically) hurt?..Incidently the car has been seen since being driven around locally by 3 youngsters with hoodies over their faces, probably trying to goad the local Police W.T.F.

[Nightstalker]

Kin little :censor: :censor: :ffs: :angry2: :censor:

I really hate scrotes!!!

If it were for me, catch the little blighters and chuck them off the cliff! Or put them down or sommet...!

As for the sollution, I guess its better to let the gits have the keys... or give them a right good kick in if you think you are up to it...

I like to think I can handle me self, so I'd give 3 their run for their money... most of the time they'd do a runner... well, so far whenever I have confronted a group of youths they have... Think 5 would be my limit though... That's if they aint tooled up, that would be a different story...

The problem we have here in good ole Blighty is there is no deterrent....!

Bring back national service for those layabouts... those who try to make somet of them selves fair nough... those who like to hang out on street corners and beat up the elderly and cause havok... get them enlisted and ship them off so they can straighten themselves out... Then again that's my opinion ;)

regards

Rob

[rambler]

hi chaps

i totally agree....bloomin little s***s. :censor: :censor: :censor: .

this is why,to a degree i live out in the sticks,we have trouble like this in colchester...where i work..,but when i come home,i like to think i live in a peaceful,quiet ,safe place.,little hamlet in the countryside.

i watched that programme last year,about kids in america somewhere taken to spend weeks out in the middle of nowhere learning oudoor skills....to survive,in was harsh.but it worked with a few of them.

kids have no respect for anything or anyone now,rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..really annoys me,my dad would give the slipper years ago if i did wrong......i learnt!!! :(

i blame games consoles and other indoor entertainment,and lack of jobs in this country.

i darn't go on

[Mereside]

Dera Local Hero,

These crimes do happen but generally are non violent. The reason being is that any confrontation will only increase the risks of being caught.

It all started with people leaving car keys next to the door on hooks and some enterprising young chaps looked in and saw the keys then poked the old wire coat hanger through the letter box and hey presto free car.

If your car is not an exotic spots car and is sat on the drive you should be ok hiding the keys as the rewards are not worth the risk of breaking in and threatening the occupant. I have had Ferrari, 145k Mercedes and recently an Audi R8 sat on my drive and was happy to keep the keys with me.

So hide your keys and you should be fine.

An interesting new trick which is rare at the moment is people parking near your car with a scanning device and when you blip your car to lock it the scanner reads the signal and stores it. They then come back later and enter your car and pinch valuables but do not steal it as the blipper does not normally overcome the transponder in the key. So the advice for paranoid people like me is to look before you blip... or lock using the key.

Hope this helps.

Regards

[reece]

Spare keys are in my safe and the keys that are used are in the kitchen away from windows and letter boxes

If you want them come and get them

[shcm]

An interesting new trick which is rare at the moment is people parking near your car with a scanning device........

Sorry, I have to disagree. Another urban myth I'm afraid.

It was the case 15 or more years ago that you could do this, but I would hope there are no manufacturers out there still fitting such badly thought out systems.

Very simplistically, each transmission has a code in a sequence (rolling code), with that sequence only known to the car and the fob. So if you did capture the transmission, it will be useless, because the next expected transmission will be very different to the one you've grabbed. The car won't accept the grabbed transmission because the sequence has moved on. If you "re-sync" the key to the car (e.g. after a fob Battery change), you are effectively synchronising the rolling code sequence in the car to the key.

There may also be a load of encryption on the transmission - a bit like using a secure web page on your browser.

Ultimately though, the transmission is only a binary number, probably made up with a fixed number of bits. So, there is only a finite number of combinations. So you could just work through all the numbers. However, if the transmission is say 64 bits at say 0.001 seconds per bit, if my maths is right, it would take something like 37 billion years to work through them all. You might get lucky (very very lucky in fact) though, and stumble on the right number first time. After all, 37 billion years is only about 2.5 times the age of the universe!

It's a fair bit more complex than this and there are a lot of pit falls you have to be careful of, but that's the basic idea.

My justification for disagreeing?? - Gonna look big headed I suppose - I've worked on the design of these things a fair bit, back in the mists of time.

We predicted at work some years ago, that when the security got hard enough, key theft would increase. Now, is finger print recognition engine start or retina scan recognition engine start a good idea?

Local - They are just vermin and in a sane world they would be treated as such. TBH the comparison is probably unfair to actual vermin.

[anchorman]

37 billion! I reckon if I get by abacus out I could do it in 36.........

One thing that does puzzle me though is how it recognises a friendly spare key and the updates it with the latest info the regular key has been discussing with the car. Didn't early systems lose count after a while so you had to keep using them from time to time?

Going back to these scum suckers, I'm afraid I work too hard for my money and possessions and I don't keep my keys by the door and if they choose to come in then as long as they don't have a gun and need to make contact with me to get them then I will probably take my chance.

[hertsnminds]

kids have no respect for anything or anyone now,rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..really annoys me,my dad would give the slipper years ago if i did wrong......i learnt!!!

i blame games consoles and other indoor entertainment,and lack of jobs in this country.

It's not the kids but the PARENTS who are the problem. They assume no responsibility for their offspring and believe they can do no wrong, so they just let them become feral.

We have a new neighbour with three children (aged between 8 and 14) she believes it is OK to leave them under the supervision of an immature 16 year old for hours on end. All this means is that you get every teenager in a 5 mile radius flocking to their house to do as they please. The children have no respect for their parent(s) and therefore no respect for any adult.

[Parts-King]

Because of the very secure nature of cars these days (generally good locks, transponder keys etc) There are few possibilities when it comes to stealing your car. The "fishing rod" idea relies on you leaving your keys on a table/ledge near the front door, a fishing rod/hook is used for taking the keys, another is to just break in your house, we see NO thefts of cars these days by people bypassing the security systems, it is easier to break into your house and drive off with the car. The next worrying trend that has been around a while is hijacking, where you are sitting at the lights and a gang of scroates open both doors and drag you out to nick your car

If you use common sense, keep keys out of site, lock your doors (yes-people still leave their doors open all night) then the scroat is more likely to go to the neighbour and nick his car if a window is open or back door left unlocked

Nightstalker: I admire your bravery, however as somebody who attained a very high standard at Karate, I can tell you the last thing you want to be doing is taking on any more than one let alone 3 or more people. These gangs of lawless idiots don't resort to a good old punch up, they are likely to at least be carrying a knife, cosh or possibly a firearm One of the first things I was taught at self defence was to run fast, because if you ever find yourself in the middle of a ruck, the best place to be is on your toes and viewing the gang from afar, no matter how woosie that looks ;)

Kingo

[Fujisan]

My guess is if you fingerprinted all the letterboxes in the street, the scumbags had checked out all the houses until they seen a set of keys they thought they could get too. :(

Remember seeing one of those police programmes and someone had left their front door unlocked and their car was stolen unsurprisingly. Out of interest the cops dust the door handles in the area and their rough estimate was that that scumbag had tried near 200 doors that night before he found one unlocked.

[local hero]

Nightstalker: I admire your bravery, however as somebody who attained a very high standard at Karate, I can tell you the last thing you want to be doing is taking on any more than one let alone 3 or more people. These gangs of lawless idiots don't resort to a good old punch up, they are likely to at least be carrying a knife, cosh or possibly a firearm One of the first things I was taught at self defence was to run fast, because if you ever find yourself in the middle of a ruck, the best place to be is on your toes and viewing the gang from afar, no matter how woosie that looks ;)

Kingo

I agree with you on this Kingo, I heard recently of someone who came downstairs to find his house had been robbed, but was baffled to find a pan of luke warm water on his hall table, when the police arrived they told him it was quite common practice for these nutters to boil a kettle of water and if anyone disturbed them they were greeted with a deluge of boiling water, they also said trip wires (fishing line) run across stairs was not unheard of

P.S missing Focus hasn't turned up yet, Although the owner TBH no longer wants it back, which i think is pretty understandable

[anchorman]

OMG, they use trip wires? I'm grumpy enough when I get out of bed without being tripped on the stairs. Is it possible to be prosecuted for maoning scumbags to death?

I once came down stairs early in the morning to find a heron finishing the last of 5 big fat goldfish that I had from being tiny little things. I ran up the garden in my grundies shouting you thieving scaly legged greedy b*****d and just failed to catch it by the legs as it made an emergency take off over next doors fence. Man it was lucky because I would have had them goldfish back dead or alive.

If you are going to rob anchorman don't do it until grumpy time has passed - about 45 minutes after waking up usually but could be longer after a bad nights sleep.

Not making light of it folkes but it doesn't pay to think too hard about these things. The trouble is that even if they get caught they will be let off with a slap on the wrist and some rediculous penalty because they can't pay - all because of today's do gooders.

It's Friday night and I am going to sit with my old mate with 2 tins of beer and put the world to rights night. This will be on the agenda rounded up by some of Local hero's phone jokes.

Eeeee........

[Goggy]

You could always do what we did !

Get yourself a BIG dog that sleeps at the bottom of the stairs AND Hates to be woken up

[shcm]

One thing that does puzzle me though is how it recognises a friendly spare key and the updates it with the latest info the regular key has been discussing with the car.

OK, assuming I've understood the question properly. Systems vary, but generally, for door lock/unlocking on cars without smart entry, it is usually all one way transmission from fob to car.

Hopefully it is fairly obvious that every key has a unique ID and that each fob used with the vehicle is registered (matched) in the security/body ECU. i.e. the car gets told which key IDs are friendly. What gets transmitted from each fob would be (simplified for the sake of argument):

• its ID
  
• which button has been pressed or held etc
  
• next number in a sequence that the vehicle can check (calculate). Should look random and big enough so that it can't be predicted and also so a lucky guess for the next transmission is very unlikely.
  
• other stuff such as whether the fob Battery has gone below a low Battery voltage threshold
  

Each fob can be at a different place in its own sequence and the car will just track where each fob has got to in its sequence. The two fobs do not need to be aware of each other or share any information.

e.g. fob 1 could have got to the 200th number in its sequence and fob 2 to the 70th number in its sequence. The car will ignore any transmission below the 200th number for fob 1 and anything below the 70th number for fob 2.

This sequence I keep referring to can be something as simple as a count of the number of times a button has been pressed. If it is then, you have to do something like add some more bits to the transmission. These are likely to be calculated based on the other contents of the transmission and a secret encryption key, which is exchanged with the car, when the fob is first matched to the car. Whatever way you look at it, you end up with a transmission all or part of which looks random and is difficult to predict or guess.

It's been a while since I did this and I'm desperately trying to think if I've missed out a piece of information that makes the above explanation appear wide open to attack. :D.

It was always a challenge to try and find ways of defeating apparently reasonably secure systems (legitimately - I don't break into cars! ) . However, ultimately it maybe not worth getting hung up on. It will probably defeat you average opportunist scumbag, but in the end, he only needs to work out that if you hit a car window hard enough it will break.

The immobilisation transponders operate more like an electrical transformer than a radio transmission and are more difficult to listen to and therefore "grab" the messages exchanged. These can be two way transmission. Early ones were just one way I think, if I remember correctly.

Didn't early systems lose count after a while so you had to keep using them from time to time?

OK, some systems have a "clock" in the fob and another "clock" in the security ECU. The clock is used to effectively time-stamp the transmission. The clocks run continuously in the key and in the ECU. The key sends its clock's time with each transmission and if the transmission is friendly, the "clock" in the security ECU is re-synchronised to the key's clock time.

I think it is fairly obvious that no two clocks that are isolated from one another stay perfectly in sync with one another. If the fob is not used, the two clocks may drift apart. Eventually the difference will be so big, that it drifts beyond anything that is within acceptable limits and from then on, when the fob is used, it will be ignored and will have to be re-synced manually.

There are also very often acceptable limits on the "rolling code" only type systems. You might find that if you press the fob buttons many times somewhere where the car can't receive it, when you come back to the car, it may no longer accept the key.

Just to reassure people, there nothing I've said here that isn't already in the public domain. There's also no deep detail, so I don't believe it helps anybody break into your car more easily.

Nightstalker: I admire your bravery, however as somebody who attained a very high standard at Karate, I can tell you the last thing you want to be doing is taking on any more than one let alone 3 or more people. T

Ah, Ninja Kingo perhaps? Is there no end to your talents?

[anchorman]

So the rolling code is mapped out during pairing of the key and the receiver and the ECU just knows what to expect next? Or am I being dim??

[shcm]

No, not being dim at all, I'm just trying to explain it simply and making a dogs breakfast of it. :D.

The ECU/receiver will probably be given information on how to work out the rolling code(s) from the key during the matching (or pairing) operation. I assume this is what pressing both buttons on the fob does, but I am guessing based on what I know about other systems and not the Toyota one.

In theory, this is probably the weakest link, though there are ways to make that reasonably secure.

[gavin32]

as regards hiding keys to me car and the other half's car i just leave them on the kitchen table their only run of the mill cars dont think any one would want to steel them.if any one did break in for them i just want them in and out .dont want to be woken up with a bar to the face in the dead of night .2 lil kids to think about as well.

[OldSkoO1]

Well the Mrs is so laid back she leaves them in the door sometimes, OUTSIDE!

But after doing it twice to her RAV i told her she really needs to pay more attention. Anyway, i put both sets of keys half way up the stairs. I heard about these theft stories before and always ensure my keys are out of reach from poles / catchers etc. Luckily our front door is a solid / no glass composite door with no windows apart from frosted glass at the top. But still you need to keep them out of reach of stuff they shove through the letter box.

Having said that, i do leave them on the stairs so if they were really determined and i can't see how they would ever get through the door being a composite metal inner, they would eventually find them. I'd rather determined burglars not make it up stairs where the family is asleep, that would be 10x worse and in any event i keep an iron bar under my bed. Which opens up a whole can of worms for me if i ever needed to use it. I'd rather that then anyone hurt my family.

[Nightstalker]

Nightstalker: I admire your bravery, however as somebody who attained a very high standard at Karate, I can tell you the last thing you want to be doing is taking on any more than one let alone 3 or more people. These gangs of lawless idiots don't resort to a good old punch up, they are likely to at least be carrying a knife, cosh or possibly a firearm One of the first things I was taught at self defence was to run fast, because if you ever find yourself in the middle of a ruck, the best place to be is on your toes and viewing the gang from afar, no matter how woosie that looks ;)

Kingo

To a certain degree I agree, running away is better, however when things come to the crunch most scrotes tend to run off as they don't expect the reaction... Perhaps I've just been lucky sofar, - dealt with 5 young Turks in Germany once (got into a scrap with 3 of them and they ended up running off) and also got into a conflab with some kids who gobbed off at me and the missus and could'nt handle someone actually standing up for themselves/their family... they just ran off once I came onto them...

Perhaps its just the shock that they dont expect one person to stand up to a group... or perhaps I've not come up agains a bunch of junkies yet(they're just a bunch of nutters when high)... I don't know.

Same as you Kingo, I've got a history of Karate/Taekwondo and a few years of forces training so I know how to keep scrotes busy and must admit that when I got into the fights I relied on the shock sending them running... Yeah fair enough if they come tooled up It's me who'll beat the land speed record, but if not then its play time... Perhaps as I grow older I might start to back down rather than risk a beating or worse... just glad its not been day to day occurrance...

Anywho... off topic ere...

Still think national service is the best for these troubled youngsters....

Regards

Rob

B)