The proliferation of sawzalls have made these obsolete, they hop in, cut the steering wheel and pull it off and leave.

 

Not sure what all the fuss is about. On the website, it's clearly stated

"IMPORTANT !!! ALL DEVICES ARE SOLD FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY !!! !!! THE MANUFACTURER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ILLEGAL ACTIONS BY THE BUYERS !!!"

It seems the proper precautions are in place.

 

So I did some reading on this as being in IT it interests me as cars become more 'hackable' as they become more computer laden.

The main articles on this there are certain cars that have easily accessible canbus ports which is terrible design. There are access points on the exterior of the vehicle. I did some more searching but the problem with LR and the Defender is there isn't a giant enthusiast community on them doing crazy things, but the only thing I could find with a quick 5 minutes of work avoidance by forum reading I found this video by Simon over at PowerfulUK on neat things you can do with the CANBUS - but note, he has access to the interior and isn't hooked up on something outside:


So to me the key was the reason the media is waving their hands in panic is like the 'Kia Boys' tik tok crazy a few car manufacturers were idiots and put canbus ports under the wheel well or something that someone could walk up and plug in and unlock/start the car in a moment vs having to get in the vehicle first, dig under the dash, plug in and go.

It'd be worth knowing if LR did something similar, but I wonder with all the need for wade depth and sound deadening if the canbus ports that are not in the cabin are not easily accessible unlike say a Hyundai Sonata that has a bit of plastic in the wheel well.

I enjoy my cars, and in my now 35 years of owning vehicles I've never managed to have one stolen, did have one broken into but that's it. If they did get stolen, I'm now 'older and have more insurance' as Kathy Bates said in that 90s movie Fried Green Tomatoes so while I don't want my vehicle stolen, if it was, it's at best an annoyance. Howver if there is a ****ty design that has the can bus accessible by say the trailer light connector, I'd want to know and ways to disable physical access would be something I'd want.

Here's the original technical discussion that the media grabbed onto and started a click bait link in the last 24 hours: CAN Injection: keyless car theft | Dr. Ken Tindell

Interesting reading. In this instance they popped some trim off and hacked in through the headlight. it was a Toyota RAV4, the frustating thing for this owner is it took them multiple tries before they got it right.

 

Thanks for the sleuthing and posting this info, very informative. If not mistaken, I thought I heard Simon say they tapped into the CANBUS using the towbar connector (56 sec in the video), though that may be inside and not easily accessible from the outside rear.

 

In Canada, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto cars are stolen like there is no tomorrow.
And i'm not talking about clunkers, but new expensive ones.
I personally know 15 people that had vehicle stolen in past 2 years.
And we have carjacking too.

 

What country is "Diagnostic Key" based in, does anybody know?

 

Poland.