For years, car owners with keyless entry systems have reported thieves approaching their vehicles with mysterious devices and effortlessly opening them in seconds. After having his Prius burgled repeatedly outside his Los Angeles home, the New York Times' former tech columnist Nick Bilton came to the conclusion that the thieves must be amplifying the signal from the key fob in the house to trick his car's keyless entry system into thinking the key was in the thieves' hand. He eventually resorted to keeping his keys in the freezer.

Now a group of German vehicle security researchers has released new findings about the extent of that wireless key hack, and their work ought to convince hundreds of thousands of drivers to keep their car keys next to their Pudding Pops. The Munich-based automobile club ADAC late last week made public a study it had performed on dozens of cars to test a radio "amplification attack" that silently extends the range of unwitting drivers' wireless key fobs to open cars and even start their ignitions, as first reported by the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. The ADAC researchers say that 24 different vehicles from 19 different manufacturers were all vulnerable, allowing them to not only reliably unlock the target vehicles but also immediately drive them away.

"This clear vulnerability in [wireless] keys facilitates the work of thieves immensely," reads a post in German about the researchers' findings on the ADAC website. "The radio connection between keys and car can easily be extended over several hundred meters, regardless of whether the original key is, for example, at home or in the pocket of the owner."

That car key hack is far from new: Swiss researchers published a paper detailing a similar amplification attack as early as 2011. But the ADAC researchers say they can perform the attack far more cheaply than those predecessors, spending just $225 on their attack device compared with the multi-thousand-dollar software-defined radios used in the Swiss researchers' study. They've also tested a larger array of vehicles and, unlike the earlier study, released the specific makes and models of which vehicles were susceptible to the attack; they believe that hundreds of thousands of vehicles in driveways and parking lots today remain open to the wireless theft method.

The Vulnerable Makes and Models

Here's the full list of vulnerable vehicles from their findings, which focused on European models: the Audi A3, A4 and A6, BMW's 730d, Citroen's DS4 CrossBack, Ford's Galaxy and Eco-Sport, Honda's HR-V, Hyundai's Santa Fe CRDi, KIA's Optima, Lexus's RX 450h, Mazda's CX-5, MINI's Clubman, Mitsubishi's Outlander, Nissan's Qashqai and Leaf, Opel's Ampera, Range Rover's Evoque, Renault's Traffic, Ssangyong's Tivoli XDi, Subaru's Levorg, Toyota's RAV4, and Volkswagen's Golf GTD and Touran 5T. Only the BMW i3 resisted the researchers' attack, though they were still able to start its ignition. And the researchers posit—but admit they didn't prove—that the same technique likely would work on other vehicles, including those more common in the United States, with some simple changes to the frequency of the equipment's radio communications.

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If you’re a total newbie to the world of car audio systems, then there’s just one key fact that you should be aware of. It isn't some byzantine formula that’s used to calculate speaker power levels or optimal speaker placements. It doesn't have anything to do with squeezing every last bit out of a car audio capacitor or adding an additional battery. It’s not even a hot tip on where to get the cheapest prices on audio gear.

The Beginner's Guide to Car Audio Systems

The most important thing to remember is that your car stereo probably doesn’t sound as good as you might think it does. And that isn't a judgmental statement. The fact is that the sound system is one of the places that OEMs almost universally neglect in the name of higher profits, and most people don't even realize what they're missing.

If a car stereo sounds okay to enough people, then that’s all the OEMs are usually looking for. Even factory-installed “premium sound systems” usually aren’t up to snuff.

So how can you tell if your factory audio needs a little tender loving care? Here’s a test that just about anyone can do:

~ Go sit in your car, close the doors, and crank up the windows.
~ Put on your favorite music and turn up the volume. Don't be afraid to go higher than you normally would, but we aren't talking “blow out your eardrums” high.
~ Listen to the music.

You’re listening for a couple different things, and you don’t have to be an expert audiophile to pick up on them.

If you find yourself turning up the treble due to a lack of clarity, that’s something that an upgrade can fix.

On the other hand, if you find yourself turning up the bass only to have the bass sound hollow or empty, that’s also something an upgrade can fix.

If the music sounds distorted when the volume is up really high, that’s another thing you can take care of with a little tinkering.

So where do you get started? There are a lot of different ways for a newbie to tear into a factory sound system upgrade, so there are a handful of questions that can help set you on the right path:

~ How important is your budget? Do you have much money to spend on upgrades?
~ Do you want to improve your sound while keeping your factory stereo?
~ Would you rather ditch the factory stereo and start fresh?
~ How important is bass?
~ Do you like listening to your music loud?

You might be surprised at how the simple act of pondering those five questions will set you on the road to building a great car audio system.

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