Comment by sorenjan

Comment by sorenjan 18 hours ago

2 replies

BMW has a page describing the use of UWB (Ultra Wide Bandwidth) radio in key fobs and how it helps against relay attacks. In short it's because the wide bandwidth allows for very short pulses which lets them measure the distance between the car and the key, and using a relay will inevitably add distance and therefore time between the signal is sent and the reply is received.

https://www.bmw.com/en/innovation/bmw-digital-key-plus-ultra...

H8crilA 17 hours ago

The core problem is that older systems never proved distance in any rigorous sense, they only proved connectivity/liveness. Pretending that you're closer than you are is sometimes called in research "the mafia fraud attack".