Do You Have A FOB?

Snowman999

Snowman999

Active member
End of April an idiot rear ended our 2010 Yaris and totaled it. He had a suspended license, and his girlfriend's truck had no insurance. THANKFULLY we still had collision on the Yaris. But, Geico totaled it and gave us a bit of money. Trying to figure out how to sue these people has been a pain in the ass. But, one way or another I will sue them.

It took 3 months. Our 2022 Toyota Corolla arrived today. It gets 53 MPG. It's a hybrid. It also has a FOB. So, I just press a button and the car starts.

I saw a report a few months back that there's a program car thieves use that will gain access to your FOB in your house. They hack your fob and steal your car. After all it's just pressing the start button.

I wrapped my fob in tinfoil and tried starting the car. It couldn't find the fob. That's great.

Does anyone know if this tinfoil will do the same to thieves trying to steal your fob info? If the foil stops the waves from reaching the car, it should do the same for a computer system outside your house? Am I wrong in this assumption?

Got a lot of driving to do now!
 
Tin foil or a metal box acts like a Faraday cage, blocking signals. You can buy bags for this also. I think this will also work on cell phones, but who's gonna do that? The FOB is always transmitting - one thief gets near the house with the FOB inside and uses a signal amplifier to pick it up and transmit it to an acomplice next to the vehicle who uses a second device to pass it to the vehicle, opening the doors and/or starting it.
 
Don't be totally secure in the fob screening. Car receivers are quite insensitive - deliberately deaf really to reduce the range. In the UK many of these for some crazy reason operate in a tiny allocation right in the middle of the UHF radio ham band and they often moan that they can hear the things everywhere. The foil screening does attenuate the signal from the fob but if only a tiny bit leaks out it's possible for a sensitive receiver to get enough. The receivers they use, normally SDR types with an antenna won't have much problem over a few metres. RF follows the inverse square law, so doubling the distance from the device quarters the power - so if you leave it a distance away from your outside, that usually works fine. So 1m to 2m is 1 quarter of the power, increasing to 4m is 16th of the power and so on, it drops off quickly. Foil AND distance - so upstairs is always good, is the key.
 
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So in looking things up the tin foil will help but can still be hacked...a simple and really "cool" way to avoid your fob being cloned is just stick them in the fridge ...apparently the multi layers of metal and insulation will keep them uncloneable and really cool
 
To all the people that answered THANK YOU. For the idiots that didn't.... Well, you're idiots, that's to be expected.

I wouldn't put my key in the fridge. It might help stop thieves, it it also might break something inside the key. I read the microwave is a good place also. Though our micro's front is not metal.

I took a metal cooking pot with metal lid, stuck the keys in that, and the car wouldn't start. So, I know where to keep my key when I'm home. This is much better than fridge or microwave.

I'm buying a faraday wallet to put the key when I'm out.

I'm an idiot about these things. But, I've thought of a few ways a brazen thief could steal someone's car with a FOB. Smart thieves probably have some more that aren't so brazen. If you have one, make sure you lock the doors wherever you go. The convenience might be great. It just makes crime easier. Step out of your car, someone pushes you aside, and before you can get up, they've pressed on, and off they go.

In the 70s and 80s cars were lucky to make it 100,000 before they became klunkers. Technology has improved on that. Toyota's supposedly get at least 200,000 miles before they really break down. Our Yaris had 150,000 and not a problem, except normal wear and tear and maintenance. Oil changes. One tune up. New battery, tires and brakes. I'm praying our Corolla gets at least the same. This car's oil change is every 10,000 miles not 5,000. I remember pre-2010 every 3,000. I wish someone would make everything manual, windows, locks, normal gages, and just keep the engine updated to modern times. Keys, and rolling down the windows are not a hassle.
 
Guys - there's science going on here. Similar science we use when talking about loads of stuff. You're kind of assigning magical powers. RF for what we are talking about here, has two properties, field strength - as in how powerful the transmitter is and attenuation, as in how it reacts when passing through other substances - just like when we talk acoustics. A Faraday shield is a way to prevent RF passing through and out to where these crooks can 'collect it' like our mics. The saucepan/cooking pot is sound science. A tight fitting lid, with no gaps will work brilliantly over a wide range of frequencies - and UHF with a few milliWatts like a radio mic pack won't get through a pot made from copper or steel. Aluminium is less good at stopping RF, but it will still work. Oddly, the metal 'box' can actually have holes in it, as long as the holes are much smaller than ther wavelength of the signal being used, so the metal box could be a cage - it still works. Your kitchen has ahuge transmitter in it - the microwave, and 700W of microwave energy will cook your bits if the safety switches on the door fail and it comes on, door open! However - you can see through the door - the mesh has very small holes that the microwave energy cannot get through. Make a hole in the mesh and you're in trouble.

The science involves dB - we do Decibels too, don;t we, so if they have an antenna with 10dB gain, and directional, it's like waving a mic around aim it at the keys and a few metres is a doddle. Wrap the keys in something metal and the few metres might come down to a couple of metres, tale them upstairs and increase the distance to 7m and even with the antenna, 10dB is useless when you've lost 20dB going through the air, the walls and the floor, let alone the foil or metal box.

The basics are very similar to when we move a mic further from the amp and it gets quieter - we need more gain, but we cannot just keep adding gain. Same with RF. Screening and distance are all you need. Here we have biscuit tins. thin steel or an alloy usually, with tight fitting lid. Stick your stuff in one of them and take it upstairs to bed - that will do fine. The fridge works because it's a metal box - BUT consider the door, they rarely are metal on metal, there's usually a ½" rubber seal where the RF will escape.

On a comms forum today, the scaremongers were at it suggesting that the end of the world is coming and you should wrap your radios in foil and stick them in an empty ammo container/box so when the nukes go off the electro magnetic pulse doesn't fry the innards of the radio. Us Brits know every US citizen has half a dozen ammo boxes tucked away with their weapon collections, so put your car keys in there (joke folks - I didn't mean every citizen)
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spantini said:
I have a hamster in a Faraday cage... he told me he was receiving signals from Andromeda.
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It wasn't till I was trying to think of ways to protect this FOB that I thought of foil hats crazy people wear. Maybe they're not as crazy as we all think. TV and radio wavelengths were bad enough. But, cell phones, WIFI on while in your pocket. It can't be good for flesh and bone.

One of the selling points of the Fob is that you keep it in your pocket. We've become so fucking lazy.
rob aylestone said:
Guys - there's science going on here. Similar science we use when talking about loads of stuff. You're kind of assigning magical powers. RF for what we are talking about here, has two properties, field strength - as in how powerful the transmitter is and attenuation, as in how it reacts when passing through other substances - just like when we talk acoustics. A Faraday shield is a way to prevent RF passing through and out to where these crooks can 'collect it' like our mics. The saucepan/cooking pot is sound science. A tight fitting lid, with no gaps will work brilliantly over a wide range of frequencies - and UHF with a few milliWatts like a radio mic pack won't get through a pot made from copper or steel. Aluminium is less good at stopping RF, but it will still work. Oddly, the metal 'box' can actually have holes in it, as long as the holes are much smaller than ther wavelength of the signal being used, so the metal box could be a cage - it still works. Your kitchen has ahuge transmitter in it - the microwave, and 700W of microwave energy will cook your bits if the safety switches on the door fail and it comes on, door open! However - you can see through the door - the mesh has very small holes that the microwave energy cannot get through. Make a hole in the mesh and you're in trouble.

The science involves dB - we do Decibels too, don;t we, so if they have an antenna with 10dB gain, and directional, it's like waving a mic around aim it at the keys and a few metres is a doddle. Wrap the keys in something metal and the few metres might come down to a couple of metres, tale them upstairs and increase the distance to 7m and even with the antenna, 10dB is useless when you've lost 20dB going through the air, the walls and the floor, let alone the foil or metal box.

The basics are very similar to when we move a mic further from the amp and it gets quieter - we need more gain, but we cannot just keep adding gain. Same with RF. Screening and distance are all you need. Here we have biscuit tins. thin steel or an alloy usually, with tight fitting lid. Stick your stuff in one of them and take it upstairs to bed - that will do fine. The fridge works because it's a metal box - BUT consider the door, they rarely are metal on metal, there's usually a ½" rubber seal where the RF will escape.

On a comms forum today, the scaremongers were at it suggesting that the end of the world is coming and you should wrap your radios in foil and stick them in an empty ammo container/box so when the nukes go off the electro magnetic pulse doesn't fry the innards of the radio. Us Brits know every US citizen has half a dozen ammo boxes tucked away with their weapon collections, so put your car keys in there (joke folks - I didn't mean every citizen)
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I'm figuring that if the car won't turn on while the FOB is in the pot with lid, that thieves couldn't hack it for the same reason. It just boggles my mind how many people with these things, don't know they can be hacked and stolen. It's like having your door locks and security system on your phone. You should just have a welcome robbers avatar.

On an episode of Bewitched in the 60s, they bought an automatic garage door opener. It kept opening and closing on it's own. I think they explained it that it was the wavelengths being sent to airplanes from ground control. They sell for $15 a universal garage door opener. I have a lock on the inside of my garage. I have to open and close it from the inside.

In my area everyone probably does have guns and ammo. I'm in the sticks.
 
rob aylestone said:
Oddly, the metal 'box' can actually have holes in it, as long as the holes are much smaller than ther wavelength of the signal
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The holes have to be less than half a wavelength.


Also, if the fobs are always transmitting, do they transmit while you're driving?
I could drive along next to your car, suck up all the data, and follow you home, before stealing your car.
 
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Lots are two way. The car calls the fob responds, the fob calls and the car responds. Even the low tec ones are stupidly easy. If you look up the frequency, as it’s a special allocation in each country/region, and stand in a busy car park you can hear them chirp as people lock and unlock. It’s a sort of hobby to record these bursts, then replay them through a cheap walk-in talkie. Some even now have recording built in! The result, the car unlocking is quite funny. The people lock again and then they unlock. Apparently this is called techno-fun. Even funnier in my view was the car park in my town next to the docks where a navigation aid went faulty sending out a strong signal on the car fob frequency. Hundreds of people unable to get into their car for hours until somebody realised and engineers were called. Blocking the signal caused havoc.
 
Snowman999 said:
It wasn't till I was trying to think of ways to protect this FOB that I thought of foil hats crazy people wear. Maybe they're not as crazy as we all think. TV and radio wavelengths were bad enough. But, cell phones, WIFI on while in your pocket. It can't be good for flesh and bone.

...
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LOL! Now you've got me thinking of the movie Signs (2002). Some seriously serious comedy there.

sss.jpg
 
Slouching Raymond said:
Also, if the fobs are always transmitting, do they transmit while you're driving?
I could drive along next to your car, suck up all the data, and follow you home, before stealing your car.
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Good question there.... IDK BUT I have had a FOB where the battery was getting low , got the car started and then as I was driving the warning came on no FOB detected...hmmm? Maybe once you start the car you can stick the FOB in a metal case so that it can not get copied / hacked while driving ..I'll try it today and report back... Such a shame there has to be low life's in this world that think it is OK to steal from another...IMO folks like that are like a mosquito sucking blood and should be dealt with similarly WHACK! C-ya bye ya piece of worthless shit..
 
Thieves, locks n Keys.

Just think....If no one stole shit , if we all just respected each other shit...there would be no need for locks and the damn keys that open them.
10's of billions of dollars wasted on something that shouldn't even be necessary.... We could feed every hungry person in the world if that money was spent on food rather than locks and keys....

Worse yet and no one but my crazy ass thinks about this shit......Think of the BILLIONS of hours that been spent WASTED around the world on our dumb asses trying to figure out where we set our keys...or worse yet lost them and had to replace them......ALL BECAUSE WE CAN'T TRUST ONE ANOTHER...what a fucked up situation..
 
Ok. Now you've knocked me out into left field. When I was around... 10 -11 years of age, mom packed us all up and we drove from Maryland to Iowa to spend a week with relatives. I don't recall the town name. Man that place was an idyllic small town. No traffic lights, and the local stores were all lined up on Main Street, as small as it was. Several had outdoor coolers for sodas at their entrances. NOBODY locked their doors in that town. Anyone could just walk over to a neighbor, walk right in without knocking or otherwise announcing, return something borrowed or borrow anything in the house... anything. In fact, weather permitting, most everyone just left all their doors and windows wide open and regarded the whole of the town as their house.

Locks tale ended :D
 
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