WONDER HOW THIEVES STEAL YOUR CAR? FIND OUT HERE

One million cars are stolen each year in America alone, how do they do it? Nolan from Wheelhouse shows us how.

Back in the day, thieves only needed a coat hanger and a screwdriver and, hey presto! Your car is gone. Today, things are a little different. Technology and hardware have come a long way, making it much more difficult to pop the door-lock open, and jamming a screwdriver into the ignition isn't going to anything more than destroy it.

The modern key-fob is one reason that vehicles are more challenging to steal. They transmit a frequency that the receiver in the car needs to operate. This is all fine and well but there's a problem.

Some key-fobs are always on, like the keyless entry type for example. Thieves use something called a signal amplification relay attack, or SARA for short. How it works is that the signal transmitted by the key-fob travels a few metres from its location, so, if you've hung your keys up on the keyholder near your front door, these naughty thieves scan this signal from outside of your home to a relay that sends it on to your car parked in the driveway.

Boom! Doors unlock and your car is no longer in your possession.

But that's not all. There's another method of signal jamming, prevalent here in South Africa actually, where those dastardly thieves jam the signal as you try locking your car using the key remote. Many drivers don't check that the vehicle is locked before walking away, and the robbers take mere seconds to either rob the car of the valuables inside, or they just take the whole damn thing.

The most frightening method must surely be hackers who take over the vehicle remotely...