Overview
- Mandatory tire pressure sensors broadcast persistent unique identifiers in clear text that can be captured without the driver’s knowledge.
- Using five receivers costing about $100 each, the team collected more than six million messages from roughly 20,000 vehicles over ten weeks.
- Signals were recorded at distances exceeding 50 meters and through buildings, and the four tire IDs were correlated to fingerprint individual cars and map routines.
- The study warns that mass passive tracking is feasible and that spoofed flat‑tire alerts could be used to force stops, increasing risks for cargo trucks.
- Researchers note that frameworks such as UN Regulation No. 155 do not explicitly cover TPMS, the paper is being presented at IEEE WONS 2026, and no industry or regulatory fixes have been announced yet.