Lexus IS300h - immune to CAN bus theft?

[propofoldreams]

Hi,

First time poster but long time lurker. While I know that this has been discussed previously I cannot find a solid answer in any of the threads so far.
 

For context in the next few months I’ll be giving back my beloved Audi E-Tron lease. For a budget around £20k I was looking for a car that was reliable, a hybrid, comfortable, decent MPG, nice to look at it, reasonable boot and relatively safe/boring. I plan on keeping it for quite a few years.

I was looking at a three year old Lexus ES but the whole CAN bus theft situation and associated increased insurance has got me quite anxious. This has LED me to looking at its the IS300h. Ticks most of my boxes and I’m thinking an either a 2016 (for the road tax) or the newest one with the spec I want (to maximise the Lexus 100k/10 year warranty). However, is it actually not vulnerable to theft by the CAN bus method? And also is it vulnerable to a keyless entry theft?
 

The IS is not listed in this list of Lexus cars thought to be vulnerable to CAN bus theft:

From this forum on these threads it looks like it wouldn’t be/at least some years wouldn’t be:

 

However, these Reddit posts (admittedly US posts) suggest there is a CAN bus theft mechanism accessible via the sunroof:

 

While the OP is talking about a 2023 IS there is a 2014 reported as well.

So is the IS300h vulnerable to a different type of CAN bus theft? If so which years?

Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on this.

Cheers!

[IS300FSPORT]

From reading up on here the 2016 onwards or the face-lift versions have the canbus. Although not many reports of the IS300H being a prime target. I'm sure others will confirm shortly may not be prone to the headlight hack for theft. 

If theifs are eager they will take it regardless of the amount of effort or force required as its not a high performance vehicle these are just your opportunists with high tech equipment steal it to break for parts or ship out although can't see the IS being desirable to theifs as a result insurance has hiked since iv had mine from 2020 it was around 550 now paying 900 (approx) & mine is the pre-facelift simply because insurers are banding all the Lexus range at high risk absolute p1ss take but the RX is the one to watch out for on insurance. 

I genuinely wouldn't worry about it if your on the hunt for an IS.

[wharfhouse]

I asked Lexus CR directly about whether the pre or post facelift IS was subject to CANbus theft via the headlight and was told that it was not and hence not in the list. It is subject to the key relay theft and so you should either put the keys in a Faraday pouch / box when leaving keys in the house or switch off the smart entry. 

Can't confirm whether there are other ways of hacking into the IS but any car will have vulnerabilities if someone is determined enough to take it which may include significant damage in order to gain entry. However, I don't remember any IS cars being reported stolen on this forum (or CTs) but plenty of RX, NX and UX. The other worry for a while was catalytic converter theft and (older) RX and CT were subject to a lot of these but again nothing for the IS which had more difficult to access catalytic converters. 

Although not 100% guaranteed not to be stolen out of the Lexus range the IS seems the lowest risk. 

[Linas.P]

14 hours ago, IS300FSPORT said:

From reading up on here the 2016 onwards or the face-lift versions have the canbus.

All cars since mid-90s have CAN-BUS, just not the stupid, exposed, CAN-BUS for "smart headlight" ECU that Toyota started using around 2014.

The links to the stolen/attempted stolen IS are clearly not CAN-BUS attacks, first one is really laughable, more likely some homeless tried to shelter inside than steal it, there is absolutelly no reason to butcher the lock like that. 

That said IS since 2005, not even 2013 are vulnerable to loads of other methods... CAN-BUS was simply the low bar for Toyota and literally negligent design which made cars extremely easy to steal, but any car can be stolen in principle, it is just the case of risk vs. reward. IS300h is simply not a big reward, so there are less bstards who are willing to take risks. But in theory if there is car that cannot be stolen, but somebody wants it badly enough, they can simply car jack you at the lights. This is really more a matter of police in UK being useless and simply decriminalising car crime, generally anything that is likely to be insured is now de-facto decriminalised, so the gangs are running rampant. UK is complete third world country when it comes to crime prevention... at least in most third world countries one can protect themselves (have guns, use them for self-defence and defence of property), in UK we don't even have that, in UK it is the criminal that is protected!

[DAN@ADRIAN FLUX]

Hi.

If you ever need any help with insurance at all then please feel free to drop me a line.

Regards,

Dan.

[propofoldreams]

Thanks all for the help, advice and reassurance! Exceptional forum!

[ColinBarber]

Whilst the facelift IS has CAN bus controlled headlights, they are connected to a different bus to the central locking module and therefore the common attack that is being exploited on other models doesn’t work. 
 

The IS is vulnerable to key relay attacks so keep your keys in a Faraday pouch/box and test that it works.

[Mr_Groundhog]

2 hours ago, ColinBarber said:

Whilst the facelift IS has CAN bus controlled headlights, they are connected to a different bus to the central locking module and therefore the common attack that is being exploited on other models doesn’t work. 
 

The IS is vulnerable to key relay attacks so keep your keys in a faraday pouch/box and test that it works.

Not only this is nice and reassuring to know... the other thing is that the IS (specially one that's a few years old like mine) is probably not atop the thieves' priority list so that lowers the risk even more.
If they have to go through the trouble of doing a key relay attack in my street, I think they would much rather go for my neighbour's new-ish BMW 5 series (or is it a 4 series? who cares, they're quite ugly).