Tire Pressure Systems in Toyota, Mercedes, and Other Major Car Brands Enable Silent Vehicle Tracking

Researchers demonstrated that direct TPMS sensors from manufacturers including Toyota, Renault, Hyundai, and Mercedes broadcast unencrypted tire telemetry and fixed 24–32 bit IDs over 315/433 MHz, enabling passive vehicle and driver tracking with inexpensive RTL‑SDR receivers. A 10‑week deployment captured millions of signals from ~20,000 vehicles and used clustering techniques to link tire IDs to cars and infer routines, exposing scalable privacy risks; the report recommends ID encryption/rotation, protocol changes, and regulatory updates.