Hackers remotely unlocked Kia cars with just a license plate scan
Being able to use an app on my phone to start my car and warm it up ten minutes before I leave on a cold morning is some real “living in the future” stuff. I love it. But connecting everything to everything does open up a lot of potential risk, and security researchers just demonstrated that.
A four-person team recently discovered a way to remotely hack into almost every recent car made by Kia with little more than a mobile connection. They built a phone app that can scan the license plate of any car with Kia Connect functionality to gain almost total remote access to it.
The tool works on Kia models as far back as 2014, with newer cars opening up more and more capabilities. On the latest Kia models, for example, the tool was able to track a car’s location via GPS, start and stop its engine, lock and unlock its doors, activate its lights and horns, and even peek through the car’s 360-degree cameras.
Perhaps even more concerning is that the tool allowed them access to personal information on the car’s owner: Name, email and password for Kia Connect, along with an associated phone number and physical address were all available.
