Interesting stuff by Nick Bilton for The New York Times. Apparently, some thieves have found a way to get into his Toyota Prius by hacking its remote keyless system:

He explained it like this: In a normal scenario, when you walk up to a car with a keyless entry and try the door handle, the car wirelessly calls out for your key so you don’t have to press any buttons to get inside. If the key calls back, the door unlocks. But the keyless system is capable of searching for a key only within a couple of feet.

Mr. Danev said that when the teenage girl turned on her device, it amplified the distance that the car can search, which then allowed my car to talk to my key, which happened to be sitting about 50 feet away, on the kitchen counter. And just like that, open sesame.

If it does indeed work that way, it’s a pretty ingenious system, I’ll give them that. Luckily, there’s a way you can protect yourself:

While I can’t be 100 percent certain this is the device they used to get into my car, until car companies solve the problem, he said, the best way to protect my car is to “put your keys in the freezer, which acts as a Faraday Cage, and won’t allow a signal to get in or out.”