I had an idea while getting into my car at lunchtime today - what if you could modify your car to add keyless entry? This idea only really struck me because I’d misplaced my keys, but hey - an idea is an idea, so I ran with it.

I thought about plugging a Bluetooth shield into an Arduino and running it from the car’s internal electronics (most cars have a cigarette lighter which provide 12v output - and they usually contain enough juice to run a small Arduino circuit for a few months at a time).

From there, you could run a small (it would have to be small - the amount of memory and processing power on an Arduino is highly limited). I’d run a small service that connected to Bluetooth devices and used a very simple (stupidly simple) authentication protocol to verify a person’s identity based on their phone.

There were two authentication models I toyed with;

### Salted Hashes (Nonce-based)

This is fairly common practice in basic authentication, and seems like it would be a best-practice approach for this sort of task.

• a constant seed value is pre-agreed securely between the two devices - maybe a random string or UUID
• the Arduino generates a random single-use salt (otherwise known as a nonce) and concatenates it with a seed value and then calculates the value of a cryptographic hash function (e.g. SHA256)
• the Arduino sends the salt to the client (in this case, a mobile phone) via Bluetooth
• the client takes the salt, concatenates it with the pre-agreed seed value and calculates the hash value
• the client sends the salted hash value to the Arduino, where the two values are compared
• if the hashes match, access is granted (in this case, the car is unlocked)

### Compound Cyclic Hashing

I’m not sure of the security/cryptographic viability of this process (I’m not even sure of the formal name!) - but I do know that some car key fobs work on a variant of this method, and it seems notionally secure.

• a constant seed value is pre-agreed securely between the two devices - maybe a random string or UUID
• a hash is calculated of the seed value, which is then concatenated with the seed value and hashed again - this is the first round
• the client does the same hash calculation (ensuring that the number of “rounds” between the client/Arduino are the same)
• the compound hash is sent to the Arduino, where it is validated

I couldn’t really think of an eloquent way to explain this authentication method, so to help, I made a diagram.

Simple, fast, and extremely easy to implement.

Either way, the idea of OpenSesame (that’s what I’d call it, as it would be open source - and I like puns) seems like a fun weekend project. Besides, keyless entry on my car would be a nice little bonus feature!

Coming to think of it, I might buy an Arduino…