UK/RHD Security Flaw Update

[Cozy]

An old friend of mine just had his 130i stolen from his drive. He had the car up for sale and some guy called him up wanting to view, took his address but never showed up. Guess what, that night the car went missing via the old 'smash window, program key via OBD port, roll it away and start it up around the corner' trick, exploiting the security flaw that RHD BMW models made after March 2007 (that BMW will admit to) suffer from. They can't even be bothered hunting for cars now, they just trawl the classifieds and let you do the work. Apparently, according to my SA, the gangs are massive and highly coordinated, paying peanuts to the actual theives and then gleaning the profits up top from either the sale of your car abroad or its value in parts.

Since he doesn't live too far away it would appear that a gang of scum are in my sleepy little area so I thought I'd better go in for the update which turns off the car's communication via the OBD port once the car is locked; it wasn't previously which is how theives could program a key.

It was there around half a day, it took a little while to download and update the CAS Module but it was totally successful as you'd expect from any main dealer update I guess, more importanly perhaps, it was free of charge. There are no changes to how the car acts or drives what so ever, it's the same car and as this isn't a full SW update it didn't get its nuts chopped by the lastest lag SW. What I did want to confirm though is that I detuned the car previously and uninstalled the COBB, as they were to interrogate the ECU I thought this best. I can confirm that nothing was detected within the ECU and no flags were raised, the car appeared to them as stock (+PE) and the only thing they could mention is that the SW is 'old' and they could update it for me. They checked over the car for free which was nice, nothing major but lifted it and looked right over the body and engine.

Probably the best part of the experience is that the SA and tech commented on how well cared for the car was, they were really pleased to see a BMW come in that someone loved, that wasn't a DD and was owned by someone who knew what they were doing. That really made my day, I spend so much time caring for this thing and I am just glad other people notice too.

Lastly, I forgot how pokey the car still feels with its original 300 horses, very nice and smooth, perfect BMW. That said it's nothing compared to a COBB car so back on that goes .