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> start the car by connecting the right wires

I might be misinformed but I've been told that for a while now (maybe 20 years or so), new cars have been built to be exceptionally difficult to hot-wire.

A South African friend told me that some brand of four wheel drive could be hot-wired but it involved getting behind one of the front head-lamp bulbs - doable, but a damaging process if you're in a rush.

by MisterTea9 hours ago|

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It's even easier than that. A lot of older ignition locks could be defeated by a screwdriver so you just smash the window, jimmy the ignition lock with the screw driver and off you go! There was a specific model of jeep that was stolen a lot because the rear lock could be popped out easily with pliers, a matching key made, and you return later with the key to steal the car.

by koverstreet8 hours ago|

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You'd have to be stupid and desperate to steal from a garage.

The people who work there aren't office workers; you've got blue collar workers who spend all day working together and hanging out using heavy equipment right in the back. And they're going to be well acquainted with the local tow truck drivers and the local police - so unless you're somewhere like Detroit, you better be on your way across state lines the moment you're out of there. And you're not conning a typical corporate drone who sees 100 faces a day; they'll be able to give a good description.

And then what? You're either stuck filing off VINs and faking a bunch of paperwork, or you have to sell it to a chop shop. The only way it'd plausibly have a decent enough payoff is if you're scouting for unique vehicles with some value (say, a mint condition 3000GT), but that's an even worse proposition for social engineering - people working in a garage are car guys, when someone brings in a cool vehicle everyone's talking about it and the guy who brought it in. Good luck with that :)

Dealership? Even worse proposition, they're actual targets so they know how to track down missing vehicles.

If you really want to steal a car via social engineering, hit a car rental place, give them fake documentation, then drive to a different state to unload it - you still have to fake all the paperwork, and strip anything that identifies it as a rental, and you won't be able to sell to anyone reputable so it'll be a slow process, and you'll need to disguise your appearance differently both times so descriptions don't match later. IOW - if you're doing it right so it has a chance in hell of working, that office job starts to sound a whole lot less tedious.

Way easier to just write code :)

by SR2Z4 hours ago|

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Stolen cars are often sold for low amounts of money - like $50 - and then used to commit crimes that are not traceable from their plates. It hasn't really been possible to steal and resell a car in the United States for many years, barring a few carefully watched loopholes (Vermont out-of-state registrations is one example that was recently closed).

When Kia and Hyundai were recently selling models without real keys or ignition interlocks, that was the main thing folks did when they stole them.

by foldor4 hours ago|

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In Canada there's been a big problem with stolen cars lately. Mostly trucks, and other high value vehicles though. Selling them locally isn't feasible, but there's a criminal organization that's gotten very good at getting them on container ships and out to countries that don't care if the vehicles are stolen. So even with tracking, there's nothing people can do. Stopping it at the port is the obvious fix, but somehow that's not what is being done. Probably bribery to look the other way.

by jamesfinlayson2 hours ago|

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Same thing in Australia - some gang was busted recently for stealing mid-range four wheel drives, packing them in shipping containers with partially dismantled cars (I guess so that a cursory inspection would just show "car parts" rather than a single nice looking car) and then shipping them around the world (I guess an overseas buyer isn't checking if a car with this VIN has been stolen on the other side of the world).

by koverstreet4 hours ago|

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Yeah, the only way to do it would be a cash transaction where you'd have to forge a legitimate looking title/registration and pass it off to a naive buyer. So it's still technically possible, but not in any kind of remotely scalable way.

by b00ty4breakfast8 hours ago|

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I reckon it is infinitely riskier to be caught attempting to break into a car than it is to just walk in to a service garage and pretending you own the Vdub in the parking lot. There is still a bit of deniability in the 2nd option but good luck explaining to the police why you are using a set of tools specifically for picking vehicle locks (because you can't just use regular pick and tension wrenches) to break into a vehicle that you don't own.