pat.beardmoreat_private wrote: >One of the main areas that the investigators I support look into is car >"clocking" (turning back the mileage on a car to increase it's value), a >small crime in itself but worth millions if done on a large scale. More and >more cars are now fitted with digital odometers. One of the proposed >advantages was security but with a laptop, correct software and sockets, >dodgy dealers can plug into the car's memory and update the data to lower >the mileage. Has anyone done any work in the area. I guess that all the >different makes store the data in slightly different ways (I guess some use >EPROM?). If there is a time, date stamp on the data, we could prove that >the mileage was changed after the initila sale date?, > >cheers, > >Pat > Coming from someone who worked in the auto industry for a short time: There are a couple issues with this. Mileage is recorded at each change of ownership. If a dealership claims an invalid mileage, or develops a pattern of miles/years suddenly dropping, they are investigated. Fraud is harshly dealt with. Also, assuming the dealership got in a single-owner with a lot of miles on it there is another route that is both cheaper (on a small scale) and probably more easily understood by the techs. All they would need to do is purchase a new dash for the car. When they purchase it, they provide a mileage that the odometer should be set to and certify that the number is correct. I *believe*, and don't quote me on it, that the mileage is somehow burned into the chip, because it is NOT resettable by dealers even if they return it to the factory for repair. For example, if you take a dash out of a "parts" car to put in another car, you cannot reset the mileage to the appropriate number. This is true in the cases I have seen at least. -b -- Fly Windows NT: All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet swooshing sounds as if they are flying. ----------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service. For more information on this free incident handling, management and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Aug 09 2001 - 15:16:43 PDT