Corvette Owners at Risk to Relay Smart Keys? (Video)

A rise in organized, tech-savvy thieves could pose new dangers to not only Corvette owners, but many other high-end vehicles as well.

Remember the good ‘ol days when you just had to insert one key into the door, and a separate key into the ignition? While remote key fobs have made things extremely convenient and gifted us luxuries like remote start, newer and smarter keys can also pose great risks.

This video posted on Facebook by CNET shows how new vehicles equipped with smart keys and proximity sensors could potentially be hacked, and ultimately stolen. For example, the keyfob for a 2017 Corvette contains a radio transmitter which communicates in typical two-way fashion with the vehicle. When the key holder approaches the vehicle, proximity sensors pick up the key fob’s short-range signal and unlock the doors and prep the car for entry.

So far so good, right? Mostly so. While most of us will never be a victim to the kind of high-tech wizardry shown by these UK-based crooks, we can imagine this will be a subject to discuss for years or decades to come. The more we rely on wireless communication to interact with our “smart” devices, the more at risk we, consumers, will be.

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While the vehicle being robbed in this video isn’t a Corvette (it’s a Mercedes-Benz), the technology found in General Motors vehicles is basically identical. We can only hope that automakers are putting solutions into place as we talk about this.