Image for the news result Three quarters of cars stolen in France 'electronically hacked'

The Smart Fortwo is a favourite with car thieves in France. Photo / Getty Images

Three quarters of car thefts in France are carried out using electronic hacking, it was claimed yesterday, prompting calls for security improvements in a range of vehicles sold in Europe.

The Smart Fortwo model was France's most stolen car, with the Ford Fiesta and Peugeot 406 models also popular among thieves.

The figures were disclosed two months after computer scientists in Britain warned that thousands of cars, including high-end marques such as Porsches and Maseratis, are at risk of electronic hacking. Their research was suppressed for two years by a court injunction for fear it would help thieves steal vehicles to order.

The kit required to carry out such "mouse jacking", as the French have described the practice, can be bought on the internet for around 700 ($1590) and the theft of a range of models can be pulled off "within minutes", experts say.

The figures prompted urgent calls by a leading French car magazine for manufacturers to "secure your cars".

Many cars use radio frequency identification chips which are designed to verify the identity of the ignition key being used to start the car engine. If thieves get into the vehicle without the right key, the engine should refuse to start. However, it is possible electronically to listen to signals sent between the security system and the key fob via a computer programme to analyse and emulate it. Once this is done, it is possible to unmask the vehicle's secret code and start the engine.

According to Traqueur, France's leader in recovering stolen cars, 74 per cent of the cars stolen in the first four months of this year were hacked.

The French car magazine 40 Millions d'automobilistes (40 Million Motorists) published a list yesterday of the most popular cars among the 110,000 stolen last year.

The Smart Fortwo model accounted for almost 12 per cent of the total. Ford Fiesta was second on almost 11 per cent and Peugeot 406 third on almost 6 per cent. Almost all the models in the top 10 were French or German-made.

Besides ease of theft, these are targeted due to the flourishing black market for their spare parts.

Pierre Chasseray, of 40 Millions d'automobilistes, singled out Smart cars, saying: "You only need to lift up a plastic panel to hack this vehicle.

"We already underlined this weakness last year. Smart has got to do more to secure their cars."

He told Le Parisien newspaper that all carmakers were in "urgent" need of improving electronic security. "Almost the entire car fleet in France can be hacked like a computer today. A car thief today is a technician without needing to be a computer genius. He just needs to connect his little electronic box to open the car."Telegraph Group Ltd