Like when you turn the key in a car, it completes a circuit right? How hard is it to just take the wire connected to the switch and touch them together?
In: Technology
Older cars are as easy as you describe. You just need to provide power to the ignition circuit and then the starter circuit. In order to do this fast though you need some knowledge of the car so that you know which wires to short circuit. Some cars do somewhat protect the wiring loom from the ignition key making it harder to find the correct wires as well.
However to combat this people started to install anti-theft systems in their cars. First it was third party systems but then these became incorporated in the cars design and are now pretty much standard. In addition to a normal key there is now electronics in the key which communicate with the car over radio to identify itself. So the electronics of the car will not allow you to start the car without the correct key in place and may even sound an alarm if you try. So it is no longer enough to just short circuit a few wires together but you need to trick the computer into thinking you have the correct key. This is still fairly easy but it means that car thiefs have to learn some basic electronics skills and some programming in order to make the tools required to hotwire modern cars. And it is expected that car manufacturers will soon start to incorporate some actual security measures like electronic signatures in these keys making it much harder to fool the computers.
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