Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda cars can be unlocked with a simple Rs 3,000 gadget

If you own a Volkswagen car, you should know that a vulnerability picked up by hackers can allow them to remotely unlock it. The vulnerability in the cars is known to exist in all models between 1995 and 2016, and there are millions of Volkswagen cars at risk.

The company’s Audi, Seat and Skoda brands are also under the same vulnerable umbrella.

The hack is probably too easy and hackers have managed to design a simple homemade radio that costs around Rs 3,000 that can unlock your car without the keys. A research filed by researchers at Usenix, University of Birmingham and German security firm Kasper & Oswald, an advanced computer systems association, filed a paper, this week, which mentions how the hack works and how the hacker can easily get into your car without your keys. The main trick is to get past the keyless entry, which operated on radio frequencies along with an RFID chip.

The BBC reported that Volkswagen is presently working alongside the researchers to curb the issue, but also mentioned that the present new vehicles are not affected by the hack.

The researchers were able to clone the digital keys to unlock a variety of VW brand vehicles. This was possible by reverse-engineering the keyless entry system to procure a master cryptographic key. The researchers have not disclosed the entire process as they cannot make this information public.