In sophisticated car hacking, which cars are most vulnerable?

If you journey into the Emerald City, you'll find high-tech workers, high-tech thieves and computer geeks using their brains to protect us all.

Seattle's Craig Smith wrote, "The Car Hacker's Handbook."  

Smith is a hacker and security researcher who consults for 10 automotive companies, alerting them to computer vulnerabilities that put you at risk.

"Breaking into a car has different meanings. There's a new type of hot wiring. You have a digital hot wiring capability now,"  said Smith.

Head south to the hills of Hollywood and you'll find Samy Kamkar in his garage.  He's a computer hacker and convicted felon who was busted by the Secret Service for creating the so-called "Samy Worm" virus that attacked "My Space."

"I've had a number of pretty interesting projects in the security and hacking community, thieves are getting more sophisticated," said Kamkar.

Kamkar is a security researcher and KIRO 7 hired him to show off his latest high-tech hack to break into our rental car.

"I'm fairly confident I'll be able to break in," said Kamkar.

Kamkar has built a $30 device he calls a "RollJam."

The small device jams the signal when you are trying to lock your car doors with a key fob, then captures the code when you try it a second time.

"The attacker can essentially, without the key, use this device to unlock the vehicle when they come back to the car," said Kamkar.  It is a cheap hack that worked like a charm for our demonstration.

Hacking has become a high-tech game of cat and mouse for law enforcement and insurance companies.

There have been at least two cases reported in the Seattle area.  

"We've actually seen at least two videos so far where individuals have just walked up to vehicles. They didn't even touch the car, they had some type of system inside their backpack in order to defeat the codes to unlock the car," said Scott Wagner who investigates auto theft in Washington for the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

From his south Seattle garage, Craig Smith is demonstrating a hack that not only unlocks your doors to thieves, but could also put your life on the line.

"You can fake an emergency," said Smith. After capturing the computer codes from a vehicle, Smith is able to control your gas and temperature gauges, even your RPM's.  "I'm controlling the gas without touching anything physically on the system. This is all done on software and this is something an attacker can do. You can do things like turn on cruise control and up the speed on it."

Once he has captured the codes to one car, Smith says it will work on every other car of the same make, model and year. If he wanted,

Smith said he could even take control of the car's computerized self-braking system to bring traffic to a halt on I-5.  

High-ticket, high-tech cars are more vulnerable to hacking.

"You could sit on an overpass and stop all the luxury cars from going forward where all the beaters go right by them. The electric cars have the ability to shut down easier than an older vehicle," said Smith.

As technology moves at the speed of light, thieves will try to keep pace. Smith says it is important to pause and talk openly about the technology and the cars we have created.

"Talking about what the issues are is like revealing a magician's trick. Once they're out there, people can fix them. They can adjust to them and you know what your risk is," said Smith.

Cox Media Group