Steal David Beckham's car with a laptop

5/4/2006 11:02:31 AM, by Nate Anderson

Stealing a US$100,000 car with little more than a laptop sounds like the stuff of which long-running urban legends are made. Unfortunately for owners of US$100,000 vehicles everywhere, it's true.

David Beckham, the English soccer football star now swinging his ponytail for Real Madrid, found this out the hard way when his armored BMW X5 was stolen by Spanish thieves (strangely enough, it wasn't even the first time). The thieves apparently used a laptop to pop the locks and start the vehicle's engine, then drove away while Beckham was at lunch.

This isn't just a problem for people married to Posh Spice. More modestly priced cars like the Toyota Prius also use fob-based ignition systems that do not require physical keys to operate. Armed with a laptop, the proper software, and a radio transmitter, thieves can remotely unlock and then start such cars.

Though such cases are still infrequent, they do happen. A Czech car thief told the Prague Post about his own lifelong experiences in the business, pointing to Nicolas Cage's Gone in 60 Seconds as an especially inspirational film. Radko Souček began his career pilfering cheap Škodas and Italian imports, which he claims could be stolen with nothing more than a pair of scissors. As cars went high-tech, Souček was forced to follow. Unfortunately for Souček, the laptop he bought and used to break into certain cars actually helped to convict him. When police finally arrested him, they found information on his laptop about the cars he had stolen.

"You could delete all the data from your laptop, but that's not good for you because the more data you have, the bigger your possibilities," he says.

Such stories will no doubt spur a cat-and-mouse game between car manufacturers and thieves. Before getting too worried about your Prius in the parking lot, though, it's worth remembering that the vast majority of stolen cars have mechanical locks and ignitions. The move to keyless fobs is not necessarily a move away from a secure system, but it does come with a new set of challenges.

Stay tuned to this space for the inevitable report on the theft of Beckham's new Audi Q7.