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Theft: Kathy Lette had her high-tech car stolen

When best-selling author Kathy Lette spotted that her sporty black BMW was missing, it took a few moments for the truth to dawn.

'At first I thought I must have got tipsy the night before and left the car at a pal's place,' she says. 'But a quick mental reconnoitre later, I realised that no, it was just missing. Stolen.'

For Kathy, the author of The Boy Who Fell To Earth and Mad Cows, the shock of losing her car was followed by a further surprise.

First, she learned from the police that this was not an ordinary car theft but 'car hacking' — a worrying new sort of crime which sees thieves use a hand-held electronic device to exploit a glitch in the 'keyless' ignition systems used in most top-end vehicles.

Over the past few years, tens of thousands of wealthy owners of keyless BMWs, Range Rovers and Audis have become victims.

'No one had told me that keyless cars were vulnerable,' says Kathy.

'I'm also upset about the things I lost which were in the boot — a laptop, a passport and the only outline draft of my next novel. And you can't get that back on insurance.'

Kathy's car — like all recent BMWs — didn't come with a traditional ignition key, but with a plastic fob containing a computer chip and security code.

When the fob is placed in a slot on the dashboard, the code is detected by the car's central computer, allowing the driver to start the engine at the press of a button.

In some models, you don't even have to put the fob into the dashboard slot: simply having it in your pocket or handbag will do the trick.

Keyless cars are supposed to be convenient and more secure. In practice, though, they are anything but.

Last month, police in London's Kensington and Chelsea warned owners that their keyless ignition systems were vulnerable to theft.

Soon to be a thing of the past? Traditional keys are fading in to obscurity as cars become more sophisticated

And the problem isn't confined to the smarter London postcards. Across the country, insurers and car organisations are saying that electronic systems designed to protect our vehicles are just not good enough.

So how did this happen? How did sophisticated, supposedly foolproof technology turn out to be so vulnerable?

The irony is that for some years vehicles had actually been getting harder for thieves to steal.

Back in the Eighties and early Nineties, anyone could break into a car within seconds.

Some thieves would slide a coat hanger inside a door window, hook it onto the door's locking mechanism and yank upwards, opening the door.

Others would use a tennis ball pricked with a hole to blow air into the lock, which forced the lock button inside to pop up.

It's a doddle: In the Eighties and early Nineties, anyone could break into a car within seconds

Once inside the car, it was relatively simple to 'hot wire' the engine by ripping out wires from underneath the dashboard and touching them together to bypass the ignition key.

Security was so lax that car theft became a mini pandemic in the Eighties. There was even a new word for it: 'twocking', or taking without the owner's consent.

After coming under pressure from consumer groups and insurers, from the mid-Nineties, manufacturers started to make their cars more secure.

Improved lock design meant it was no longer possible to unlock a car door with a piece of wire or by jamming a screwdriver into the lock and turning. And it became far harder to hot wire an engine by fiddling around with wires under the dashboard. Cars would automatically lock or trigger alarms if any attempt was made to hot wire them.

Ignition keys also began to come with built-in computer chips, making them harder to copy. Turning a key in the lock wasn't enough — the car had to detect the chip in the fob before the engine would start.

But manufacturers didn't stop there. As cars became more complex, an increasing amount of work was handed over to the onboard computer hidden under the vehicle's bonnet. These computers don't just control and monitor the engine, brakes, lights and air conditioning, they also control the locks. And that's where the problems began.

'As car manufacturers press on with new technology, the thieves are close behind them,' says Ian Crowder of the AA.

'That's because there is such a ready market for stolen cars. A third of all stolen cars are never returned to their owners.'

For enterprising criminals, it didn't take long to find a way of exploiting the technology of keyless cars.

When you buy a car fitted with this technology, you are issued with a keyless ignition fob programmed by the manufacturer with a unique 40-digit code. Place the fob on the dashboard, or just climb into the car with it, and the car's onboard computer will detect the code. If it matches the one in its memory, the driver is allowed to start the car.

However, the computer is capable of doing more than just checking the code. It can also re-progamme a blank fob with a new code.

Simple no more: Cars such as the Renault Laguna II now come with electronic smart cards to replace keys

And here is where the trouble begins. For just £20, car thieves can buy a blank key fob and a hand-held box that plugs into the 'on-board diagnostic port' — a socket linked to the computer which is usually found next to the passenger side footwell.

The hand-held box tells the computer to reprogramme the blank fob with a new code. It takes only a few seconds to create a fob that can be used in the car again and again.

These boxes are available on the internet and were designed so that garages and locksmiths could create replacement fobs for owners whose own sets had been lost or stolen.

But they are also easily available to thieves.

Thieves still have to get inside the cars, of course. Some do it the old-fashioned way by smashing a window. Others lurk close to a car as it parks and use a radio-scrambling device — again, easily bought on the internet — to stop the car locking when a driver presses the remote control button.

After the driver walks away, unaware that he has left his car unlocked, the thieves can climb in, reprogramme the security system … and drive off.

Steve Launchbury of the Thatcham Research Centre, which works on security and safety for the motor insurance industry, says: 'The scale of keyless theft is certainly on the increase.

'The devices they use are available on the internet via search engines, auction sites or, in some cases, direct from unscrupulous locksmiths and manufacturers.

'Most vehicle brands are potentially at risk because these devices are widespread.'

The Metropolitan Police estimate that half of all car thefts involve keyless hacking.

The Association of Chief Police Officers says BMW and Mercedes — two major users of keyless ignitions — are the third and fourth most stolen cars in the UK, behind Ford and Vauxhall, even though there are fewer of them and they are more likely to be kept safe in garages than cheaper cars.

The risk was highlighted this year by so-called 'ethical hackers' — engineers looking for technical weaknesses — who breached security systems by a similar route, to warn manufacturers and the public about the dangers.

Desirable: High-end cars like the Range Rover come with ever-cleverer ignitions - but owners should be careful

Using a home-made gadget costing just £12, they demonstrated to a conference in Singapore how it was possible to take over a car's onboard controllers and switch on lights, activate the brakes and operate the locks and engine.

It shouldn't be beyond manufacturers to fix this. Car computers could be tweaked to make it harder to reprogramme a fob without the owner's consent. However, that would make it more expensive to replace lost keys.

For now, the onus is on owners to protect their vehicles.

Police and the AA say drivers of keyless cars should invest in an old-fashioned steel crook lock that hooks around the steering wheel or pedals and costs from £30. These locks were popular in the Eighties and Nineties, but have fallen out of favour in recent years.

'You can have all the technology in the world, but when a thief is faced with a piece of locked steel it means the theft will take more time and it reduces the risk of the car being stolen,' says Ian Crowder of the AA.

As for Kathy Lette, she's not willing to forgive and forget just yet. 'I hope that the thieves get endless parking tickets, flat tyres and cracked windscreens,' she says. 'Do you have any idea how many millions of words I had to write to be able to buy that car?'