That\u2019s a problem, since UC San Diego researchers have just discovered a vulnerability in Karr\u2019s system that could allow nefarious actors to send commands over Bluetooth to unlock car doors, disable ignition, and enable all sorts of other chaos.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, this is one of those cases where security experts have already notified Karr, and Karr has pushed out an update to patch the oversight, per Wired<\/a>. This can be installed via a companion smartphone app that anyone can download, whether they\u2019re a paying subscriber or not. If you fall into the latter camp, as I\u2019m sure most of us do, you may wonder how to determine whether your car even has Karr equipment in it. Turns out that such vehicles have stickers that read \u201cKarr\u201d or \u201cSWDS\u201d on their driver-side windows, though if you have suspicions, it\u2019s not a bad idea to ask your dealer.<\/p>\n If you believe Karr, this vulnerability is nothing to worry about, and the company intends to work with dealers to notify owners with affected vehicles. \u201cThe vulnerability described in [UCSD\u2019s] research is highly complex and presents a low risk to customers under real-world conditions,\u201d a spokesperson from the firm said to Wired. \u201cNevertheless, we responded promptly and developed a firmware update to address the issue.\u201d (\u201cPromptly,\u201d in this case, is doing some heavy lifting, as it apparently took 18 months for the company to issue this patch.)<\/p>\n The only problem with that calm tone is that researchers, frankly, don\u2019t agree with it. One UCSD professor called this \u201cprobably the worst\u201d car hacking threat to date. These experts also demonstrated to Wired how easy it is to mess with a Karr-equipped vehicle that doesn\u2019t have the new update installed yet, so long as the hacker has the right software.<\/p>\n Karr-alarmed vehicles aren\u2019t just liable to these threats while they\u2019re running; the system\u2019s Bluetooth radio stays on for 10 minutes after a car\u2019s been turned off, which widens the window for potential trouble.<\/p>\n The reason Karr\u2019s hardware is present in so many more cars than it\u2019s actually used in is that some of the 3,000-plus dealers nationwide that the company works with incorporate the tech as a loss prevention measure. Before sale, when cars are still on the lot, dealers can track their inventory using Karr\u2019s systems. Then at the point of sale, dealers will offer customers the choice to pay a regular fee to benefit from that security themselves. But if they refuse, the alarm isn\u2019t necessarily removed; customers may have to request it, and even then, not every dealer is going to honor that ask without making life difficult.<\/p>\n Part of this is yet another symptom of modern connected car ownership. But unlike the SignalTrace<\/a> or Flock<\/a> phenomenon we\u2019ve been covering extensively (and, unfortunately, first-hand<\/a>) as of late, this problem seems to have a common-sense solution: legally mandate that dealers must remove alarms like these from their cars when sold, unless that customer has consented and wants to pay for that monitoring going forward. The potential for bad actors to exploit extraneous hardware that never needed to be in the car in the first place is too great to just leave it there, and the dealers in question need to understand that they\u2019re putting everybody at risk unless they take this sort of thing seriously.<\/p>\n Got a tip? Reach out to tips@thedrive.com<\/p>\n Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site\u2019s slate of daily stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-776900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-21-132527.jpg\")
A screenshot of Karr\u2019s website, showing the features of its alarm systems. Karr Security Systems<\/p>\n