PalmPilots are handy for keeping contacts, remembering appointments -- and unlocking car doors.
That last feature came as a surprise to 3Com, manufacturer of the popular handheld information manager. Since last week, it has been fielding reports from European users that the infrared-equipped Palm III can emulate remote-controlled car keys.
Allen Bush, spokesman for 3Com, said the company has looked into the matter and determined the capability is not unique to the PalmPilot. Many of the devices come with a feature that will "train" their infrared ports to learn the behavior of other infrared devices, he said.
A PalmPilot user in Denmark reported in an online discussion group last month that he had unlocked a car with a handheld. Then, last week, Danish journalist Lars Michael Sorensen made a similar finding.
"Since then, we have learned of other ways to do the same trick," Sorensen reported by email Tuesday.
Once combined with freely available software called OmniRemote, the infrared-equipped PalmPilots can emulate the behavior of any television remote control. Aim a remote control at the Palm, and press a function -- such as "play" -- and it will sample the digital code it sends out via infrared. In this way, the unit can be trained to send out remote signals to control TVs, stereos, and VCRs.
"There's no mystery to it," said Blake Hannaford, a University of Washington professor of electrical engineering. "The remote sends out a sequence of pulses, a code, and the other device simply receives it. It uses that same code to control the device."
"You could do this all along with a standard universal remote or anything that has a programmable [infrared controller] in it," Bush added.
Hannaford noted that a thief would have to spot an approaching car owner and surreptitiously move directly into the path of the infrared beam as the person unlocks the car.
"That's a bunch of constraints. There's an easier way to steal cars," he concluded.
Solomon Daniels, marketing manager for Code Alarm, which manufacturers remote-controlled locks and alarm systems for GM, Volkswagen, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and others, said the issue of "code-grabbing" is one that has, for the most part, been addressed by the industry.
He said he suspects two factors are likely behind the reported incidents. Locking systems built for the European car market often use a different frequency of infrared signal, and the Pilot's infrared may be in that range.
But more significant is the age and quality of the locking systems. Cars older than three years are less likely to feature locks that use a changing code system, called "rolling code" or "code shift."
"Most manufacturers have gone to a system where every time you push the remote control button it will cycle to a different code," Daniels said.
"This is nothing new; it just so happens that these people figured out how to do it on a Palm III," concluded Bush. Short of disabling the infrared functionality of the device, he said the there's nothing 3Com could do to fix the problem.
