As we’ve mentioned previously, the integrity of your vehicle in an era where even your car can have a data connection could be a dubious bet at best. Speaking to these concerns, a soon-to-be published paper out of the University of Birmingham in the UK, states that virtually every Volkswagen sold since 1995 can be hacked and unlocked by cloning the vehicle’s keyfob via an Arduino and software defined radio (SDR).

The research team, led by [Flavio Garcia], have described two main vulnerabilities: the first requires combining a cyrptographic key from the vehicle with the signal from the owner’s fob to grant access, while the second takes advantage of the virtually ancient HiTag2 security system that was implemented in the 1990s. The former affects up to 100 million vehicles across the Volkswagen line, while the latter will work on models from Citroen, Peugeot, Opel, Nissan, Alfa Romero, Fiat, Mitsubishi and Ford.

The process isn’t exactly as simple as putting together $40 of electronics and walking away with a vehicle. The would-be thief must be close in order to detect the fob’s unique key — although they only need to do so once for that vehicle! — as well as reverse-engineer the other half of the code from the vehicle’s internal network. Exploiting HiTag2’s vulnerabilities to unlock the vehicle can be achieved within a minute by a well-prepared thief. [Garcia] and his team note that only the VW Golf 7 has been spared from this exploit.

If thievery is not your thing and you’re looking to white-hat hack your vehicle, Volkswagen still has the best option in the form of the loveable Beetle.

[Thanks for the tip therafman!]