Therefore while thinking about how to secure your car, you should check the region you drive it, first of all: USA , Australia, Russia, Great Britain, Canada and Saudi Arabia deserve special attention. Although such EU countries like France, Italy, Greece and Spain suffer from car theft as well. Car theft devices market is growing every year, helping criminals steal cars with less efforts. Now with the “right” device they can easily retranslate and emulate oe keys, substitute ECU block and drive the car away in a couple of minutes or even less.
Then if your car is in a “risk group” (especially when it is rated in a Country’s TOP list of stolen cars- statistics is fully available), we suggest to check what are the most popular theft ways that criminals use in your region in order to decide what’s the best way to protect your car and what are your car’s weak points in a car theft context. For example: there are cases when criminals steal Toyotas via CAN bus short -circuit. The tricky thing is that the engine can be started even when the CAN bus is blocked, it simplifies criminal’s “work” a lot. Then even so called CAN immobilizers won’t help. For that we designed special IGLA with CAN&LIN bus digital blockings btw;). If your region suffers from car hijacking, check if there is an anti-hijack feature included in your security system. And make sure that it works correctly with no risk to you as a driver. For example: our IGLA already includes anti hijack mode: when the car is stolen the system will ask to introduce the PIN code to deactivate it. In case it’s not introduced by the criminal IGLA will stop the engine (when the speed is low and safe for other cars on the road).
There is also a risk when you leave your car on service, where somebody may duplicate your car key via OBD port hacking. It’s a problem but there are solutions to prevent that. For example we designed special OBD block which will not let anybody read any info via OBD port without special connector that you keep with you while your car is on service.
Thus we should be informed, prepared and protected.
Best always,
Author Alarm Team