This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of utilise.

jeep

The days of car thieves breaking the ignition cylinder with a screwdriver are long gone. In the computer historic period, even car theft has gone digital. Members of a motorcycle gang from Tijuana, Mexico take been arrested by the FBI after stealing more than 150 Jeep Wranglers by exploiting all those mod security measures that are supposed to brand information technology harder to steal cars.

The perpetrators were part of Hooligans Motorcycle Gang sub-unit called Dirty 30. Since 2014, the gang would cross into southern California to watch the location of Jeep Wranglers. After snatching the vehicles, they were driven back over the border to exist stripped for parts. Information technology was allegedly a remarkably well-organized scheme that resulted in the theft of vehicles worth more than $4.v 1000000.

The gang was separate up into crews, and each member of a crew had a specific part to play in the thefts. At that place was a leader, transporter, sentinel, and cardinal cutter. Court documents allege that all the thefts were carried out in the same way. Start, a scout would find a Jeep Wrangler and surreptitiously obtain the vehicle identification number (VIN) from the dashboard or elsewhere on the torso of the jeep. Next, the thief would use specially cut keys to steal the vehicle and hand it off to the transporter, whose job it was to get dorsum beyond the edge.

Y'all may be wondering how the thieves managed to become keys that worked with all those jeeps. The FBI claims the gang was able to gain access to a confidential database of replacement primal codes for Jeep Wranglers, which is why they stole that model exclusively. Authorities claim the codes came from a Jeep dealer in Cabo San Lucas, United mexican states. Using the VIN, the gang was able to find two codes in the database: ane that immune them to cutting a physical cardinal to offset the car and the other was used to hack the car'south software.

Jeep'south keys comprise an hallmark chip that has to be paired with the vehicle to starting time it. And so, the replacement key would open the door, simply non start the engine. The alarm would go off at this betoken, just the thieves would open the hood and disable the horn first. That's where the second database lawmaking comes in. After gaining access to the vehicle, the thief would connect a handheld diagnostic reckoner to the Jeep's Onboard Diagnostics Arrangement (OBD) port. The second code allowed the thief to reprogram the vehicle to take the new key, and it would start right up. Constabulary released the video above to testify how the gang could steal a Jeep Wrangler in under two minutes.

Jeep is reviewing its hallmark code system, but authorities accept also recommended information technology alter the hood mechanism then the horn can't be disabled.