Police in Europe Arrest Car Theft Gang That Tried to Hack Thousands of Vehicles
A criminal group in Europe may have been trying to hack tens of thousands of vehicles with keyless entry systems in an effort to steal them.
Police in France, Spain, and Latvia dismantled the criminal group, which resulted in the arrests of 31 suspects, according(Opens in a new window) to Europol, which announced the news on Monday.
The car theft ring allegedly targeted vehicles with keyless entry systems from two unnamed French automakers. “A fraudulent tool—marketed as an automotive diagnostic solution, was used to replace the original software of the vehicles, allowing the doors to be opened and the ignition to be started without the actual key fob,” Europol said.
The European law enforcement agencies also published a notice that says "This service has been seized." This suggests the makers of the hacking tool sold access to it online, likely over dark web marketplaces, before the crackdown.
Europol declined to provide other details, like what vulnerability was exploited to hack into the vehicles, or the names of the auto manufacturers. But an agency spokesperson tells PCMag: “The car manufacturers are now working to update their systems to fix the vulnerability exploited by the criminal.”
There’s also evidence that the hacking occurred on a relatively wide scale. During the investigation, French police seized several servers from the criminal group that had “recorded over 53,000 connections.”
“This gives an idea of the scale of the criminal activity (each connection = an attempt to steal a car),” the Europol spokesperson adds.
The arrested suspects included the software developers of the hacking tool, the resellers of the hacking tool, and the car thieves who ended up using the software. In addition to the
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