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Hyundai and Kia thefts keep rising despite security fix

https://news.yahoo.com/hyundai-kia-thefts-keep-rising-144034139.html

Nearly three months ago, Hyundai and Kia unveiled software that was designed to thwart an epidemic of thefts of their vehicles, caused by a security flaw that was exposed on TikTok and other social media sites.

So far, it hasn’t solved the problem. Across the country, thieves are still driving off with the vehicles at an alarming rate.

The companies’ affected cars, many of them lower-cost models from the 2011 to early 2022 model years, were not equipped with a theft immobilizer. Such a device contains a computer chip in the key that must be recognized by another chip in the steering column before the engines will start.

Though most automakers have had the chips for years, Hyundai and Kia have lagged behind the industry as a whole in installing them on many models, thereby allowing thieves to exploit the security gap.