WATCH: Two Hackers Use A Tablet & A Smartphone To Steal A Tesla Model S

An English man recently had his Tesla stolen by a couple of hackers, posting a video of the event captured by his home’s security cameras to YouTube.

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Essex man, Antony Kennedy, only had the car for nine months before it was knicked, purchasing it second-hand for £45,000 ($82,549). He kept it parked in his driveway where two security cameras kept an eye on it, but that didn’t stop the car from getting jacked.

The two thieves hacked the car’s key FOB signal – which was inside the house – to gain access to the car without even touching it. One man can be seen walking around with a tablet looking for the signal while the other one waits near the car with a phone. According to text in the video, it looks like the bloke with the tablet is boosting the signal to the phone, which then unlocks the door.

You can have a look at the footage for yourself below.

To be clear, this could happen to any car with keyless entry and start, not specifically a Tesla. Before calling the police, Kennedy called the electric car company who he hoped would be able to track the car, but unfortunately, the crooks had removed the car’s SIM or disabled it, he told Motherboard. He provided the above footage to police but hasn’t heard anything from them since. I hope the poor bloke had insurance.

If you’re worried about the same thing happening to you, Kennedy recommends keeping your key FOB in a Faraday pouch to block its signal and making sure you have the PIN to Drive feature turned on, which, as the name suggests, forces you to enter a PIN to start the engine. You could also turn off passive entry, which would stop the doors automatically unlocking as you approach the vehicle, but according to many users, that’s one of the best parts of owning a Tesla.

“Passive entry is like magic,” he told Motherboard. “It’s one of the coolest things about the car—you walk up to it and the handles magically appear.”

We’ve entered a brand new age for car theft, folks. Gone are the days of simply jimmying open a door with a coathanger and hotwiring the engine. Now you can apparently do it with computer smarts. The future is a scary place.


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