'Burglar's Dream Come True' Costs $32 to Make

(RollJam photo: Samy Kamkar)

If everything is wired, then everything can be hacked.

And here comes RollJam to help prove it. Made from $32 in materials, it can open “every garage that has a wireless remote, and virtually every car that has a wireless key,” its hacker-inventor, Samy Kamkar, told Wired. He introduced it at DefCon, the famed hackers convention, last month.

It’s been called a “burglar’s dream come true.”

RollJam grabs radio-signaled code – a long-known vulnerability of keyless entry that manufacturers have addressed by instituting so-called rolling codes, which change after every use.

Here’s how Wired describes RollJam’s “uncannily devious” innovation:

The first time the victim presses their key fob, RollJam “jams” the signal with a pair of cheap radios that send out noise on the two common frequencies used by cars and garage door openers. At the same time, the hacking device listens with a third radio—one that’s more finely tuned to pick up the fob’s signal than the actual intended receiver—and records the user’s wireless code.

When that first signal is jammed and fails to unlock the door, the user naturally tries pressing the button again. On that second press, the RollJam is programmed to again jam the signal and record that second code, but also to simultaneously broadcast its first code. That replayed first code unlocks the door, and the user immediately forgets about the failed key press. But the RollJam has secretly stored away a second, still-usable code. “You think everything worked on the second time, and you drive home,” says Kamkar. “But I now have a second code, and I can use that to unlock your car.”

And the only thing the victim might notice is that the wireless device didn’t work the first time—hardly a dead giveaway that something’s amiss.

Kamkar successfully tested RollJam on Genie and Liftmaster garage door openers as well as a range of cars and Cobra and Viper alarm systems, he told Wired.

Kamkar, whose Twitter motto is “Think bad, do good,” says he seeks to challenge manufacturers to build better devices.

“This is throwing the gauntlet down and saying, ‘Here’s proof this is a problem,’” he told Wired. “My own car is fully susceptible to this attack. I don’t think that’s right when we know this is solvable.”

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