Car theft in the UK is no longer about broken locks or smashed windows — it is increasingly a wireless crime.
According to the latest police-recorded crime figures, over 120,000 vehicles were stolen in England and Wales in a single year, a level that remains historically high. At the same time, insurers report that around 60–70% of stolen vehicles are keyless models, reflecting how modern convenience features have reshaped criminal tactics.
Crucially, this is not simply a result of more cars on the road. Over the past decade, vehicle thefts in England and Wales have risen from roughly 2.7 thefts per 1,000 cars to around 4.4 thefts per 1,000 cars, meaning the risk to an individual vehicle is now more than 60% higher than it was ten years ago.
The UK government has now explicitly acknowledged this shift. Official data published on .gov.uk states that “sophisticated electronic devices” were used by criminals in around 40% of vehicle thefts in England and Wales. These devices include the radio-based tools that make relay theft possible — allowing a car to be unlocked and driven away without ever touching the keys.
While that 40% figure also includes other electronic methods, relay attacks are unique in one crucial respect: they exploit the normal operation of keyless entry itself, not a software vulnerability or physical access to the vehicle. As long as a key fob responds to radio queries at a distance, a relay attack remains possible — fast, silent, and extremely difficult for owners to detect.
This article looks exclusively at relay theft: how it works, why it became so prevalent, why motion sensors in key fobs only partly mitigate the risk, and why Ultra-Wideband (UWB) finally breaks the attack at a technical level.