Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

It used to be that an alarm sys­tem for your ve­hi­cle brought peace of mind. If any thieves at­tempt­ed a break-in, the blar­ing sound that is trig­gered was enough of a de­ter­rence. But as tech­nol­o­gy evolved to al­low us to do the once unimag­in­able, it has al­so em­pow­ered crim­i­nals.

The fre­quen­cies on these alarm sys­tems are be­ing over­rid­den, scram­bled or even cloned, mean­ing that your alarm be­comes their alarm. This has been go­ing on for some years, and Sgt Christo­pher Swamber of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) Stolen Ve­hi­cles Squad said it is very much on their radar.

“We are treat­ing these mat­ters very very se­ri­ous, and now high-end ve­hi­cles are be­ing stolen in up­scale res­i­den­tial ar­eas and these ve­hi­cles are parked,” he said

Sgt Swamber says the in­for­ma­tion they are get­ting is via so­cial me­dia and no one had yet made an of­fi­cial re­port at a po­lice sta­tion.

How­ev­er, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at one of the coun­try’s car re­trieval com­pa­nies said it’s hap­pen­ing more and more.

“Every month or so we’d get two or three re­ports. It’s not hap­pen­ing to our clients but a lot of high-end ve­hi­cles are be­ing stolen,” said Dirk Barnes, of Air Sup­port Tac­ti­cal Se­cu­ri­ty

Those ve­hi­cles, he said, are most­ly SU­Vs and these types of thefts hap­pen most­ly in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons.

Barnes said the crim­i­nals are us­ing two meth­ods to over­ride or clone ve­hi­cle alarms. One is called a De­nial of Ser­vice at­tack (DOS), the oth­er is Sig­nal Am­pli­fi­ca­tion Re­lay At­tack (SARA).

“The DOS at­tack is where there is a man in the mid­dle be­tween you and your re­mote and your ve­hi­cle. The av­er­age per­son when they jump out of their ve­hi­cle at a pub­lic place you will press your but­ton on the alarm with­out check­ing to see if the door is locked. But if there is a man in the mid­dle in­ter­fer­ing with the fre­quen­cy then he is pre­vent­ing your car from lock­ing and you’re not aware so you will walk away from your ve­hi­cle that is not locked,” Barnes ex­plained.

“The SARA is the newest tech­nol­o­gy. What that en­tails is am­pli­fy­ing the sig­nal be­tween your key and the ve­hi­cle. When the av­er­age per­son gets home they take their key and put it on their key rack or ta­ble but at nights when you’re fast asleep, they will come to your front door with an an­ten­na that will pick up the fre­quen­cy of that key and then it is re­layed to an­oth­er per­son with an­oth­er an­ten­na that is repli­cat­ing your key sys­tem, then they can open your ve­hi­cle.

“Keep in mind that the sec­ond an­ten­na has a copy of the sig­nal and they can use that at a lat­er time and even re­pro­gramme your alarm and that’s some­thing we’ve been see­ing of­ten.”

Barnes said com­bat­ing this high tech crime may take some low tech so­lu­tions, such as mak­ing sure the car doors are locked even if the alarm is ac­ti­vat­ed, us­ing club and brake locks, en­sur­ing your prop­er­ty is se­cure and in­stalling GPS on the ve­hi­cle.

Mean­while, Sgt Swamber is plead­ing with cit­i­zens to re­port these mat­ters when they oc­cur.

“Re­port the mat­ter to the po­lice im­me­di­ate­ly so we can put things in place and strate­gize,” he said.