Missing FOB Notification

33

Description

If the car is driving without the FOB, send a notification to the owner’s phone of the issue. Also force remote access on, even if it was previously set off or is turned off while the FOB is missing from inside the car.

Competitive/Pricing/Notes

There are two cases where this is helpful

  1. You are the driver, and you leave the car and your passenger hops into the driver seat and drives off, yet you forgot to give your passenger the FOB. When your passenger next turns off the car, they are unable to start it again (actually happened to me as I left to go on an international flight).
  2. A rare, but real security issue is a thief using a FOB extender (works on any brand of car). One accomplice must be physically nearby your FOB (5-10 feet) and another at the car ready to drive off. Auto-unlock must also already be on. They can start and drive off without the FOB.If you are notified when this occurs, you can take some kind of immediate action (and the thief can’t disable remote access). You can even track their location and report it to the police.

Moderator: We believe Tesla has eliminated the risk of #2 with the current 2020 FOB design. Tesla makes the new fob available (at a price) for older cars.

Status

Unknown.

Category: CY3XS Applies to:
Tags:
     Created 9-Jul-2018
Moderator
34,305

2 Comments

Maarten - True, but only in Europe. I gather Tesla needed easy access to provide the right SIM card for the local country the car is being delivered to.  One could try and make the SIM card harder to access (it's on a cable), to reduce this attack vector.

In North America the Sim card is inside the MCU. It takes at least a hour to disassemble the dash to get to it.  Not sure about Asia.
    Created 10-Jul-2018
Moderator
34,305
For case 2: a thief can remove the sim card of the internal phone quite easily, blocking remote access.
    Created 10-Jul-2018