Serious Security: The Modern Armored Car Includes Countermeasures and Electronic Encryption

The modern world of increasingly digitalized vehicles presents new challenges for the security industry. I recently drove an armored Audi RS 7 built by U.S. Armor Group, which featured plenty of James Bond gadgets for protection.

Learning about how U.S. Armor Group integrates bulletproof glass, pepper spray, a smoke machine, and electric shocking door handles took up plenty of my time with the car. And I also wanted to experience how an armored car with these deterrents handled the additional weight.

But in the end, much of my conversation with founder Jeffrey Engen revolved around how electronics and connectivity require new solutions when armoring a car. From next-gen firewalls that keep hackers from accessing critical drivetrain sensors to encrypted Wi-Fi and onboard data storage, modern high-net-worth buyers need to know exactly where their vulnerabilities start and stop once they climb into an armored vehicle.

“Most of the people that are buying our armored vehicles are high net-worth individuals,” Engen said. “They’re wealthy people, executives, celebrities, athletes … A lot of people wonder where the armor is, and the armor is actually all on the inside of the door panels. We also armor the floors and the firewalls.”

Armored Audi RS 7

First of all, you’d never know from the outside that this RS 7 was armored. A silver paint job with dark window tint absolutely blends into traffic here in Los Angeles. However, my professional (and enthusiast) eye immediately noticed the APR tuning badge on the rear of the car.

Then I swung the driver’s door open, and felt the additional heft of U.S. Armor’s B4 handgun ballistics level of protection. Thicker glass can stop rounds as beefy as a .44 Magnum. But the additional weight of the glass also requires stronger window regulators.

The door simply feels heavier to the touch, and the window cannot roll down all the way anymore. The original window switches also don’t work, so U.S. Armor installs aftermarket controls ahead of the armrest.

Loads of Goodies Are Hiding in the Ashtray

From the driver’s seat, the Audi looked fairly normal, with standard gauges ahead of the stock steering wheel. That was until Engen flipped up the cover on the standard ashtray cubby to reveal new switchgear that controls some of the security systems.

Strobe lights stood out for me, since I know that colored flashing lights can be illegal in certain regions. That’s due to the similarities to law enforcement vehicles. U.S. Armor uses red strobes in the upper windshield plus alternating red and blue in the front grille. Brights and flashers at the rear also augment the Audi’s stock taillights.

Luckily, Engen is a former L.A.P.D. officer of 30 years, including 15 on the Fugitive Task Force. He explained that most of the regulations for armored cars follow the spirit of the law intended for cash transport trucks.

That set my mind thinking about one of my favorite heist movies, The Town, and how easily a crew of bank robbers handled an assault on a cash truck. Still, I declined to sample the 12V electric shock door handles, which Engen described as more of a painful sting than a debilitating jolt.

Check the Oil, Fill the Smoke Screen

Then we checked out the pepper spray and smoke system. U.S. Armor installs these below the rear trunk floor next to the spare wheel and tire. Essentially, there are two extra windshield wiper reservoirs, one for each fluid.

The pepper spray comes out of nozzles in the molding above the driver’s door, while the smoke machine works by feeding coolant into the exhaust system. The whole car smelled of that sweet coolant smell, since Engen regularly uses the smoke in demonstrations.

Engen drove past a couple of times to show me how smokey the exhaust gets. Revving the engine as high as possible helped, but the prospect of a total smokescreen distraction went right out the window.

Instead, the system seems like it would work best at night. Or, it would help prevent a sniper from sighting heads from the rear end of the car — not causing your pursuer to have to stop to avoid a crash.

The B4 level of protection adds only a few hundred pounds, so the RS 7 handled almost exactly like stock. Maybe like if a couple of fully grown passengers sat in the backseat.

More Protection Means More Weight

If you need even more protection, U.S. Armor will happily equip a car, truck, or SUV to handle up to .50 caliber ammunition. Even anti-tank round protection is possible. Other options include run-flat tires, which Engen admits will ruin wheel alignments quickly and require frequent replacement. Protection for the engine bay also fits into many packages.

Increased protection increases weight significantly, though. Installing the door panels, floor, engine bay lining, and bulletproof glass requires fully stripping the car’s interior. That includes removing the dash and seats.

Full rifle armoring adds approximately 2,000 pounds of weight, depending on the vehicle size. Anti-tank protection can run up to 4,000 pounds. Engen also armored his own personal Lucid Air Sapphire, which he can now tout as the fastest armored vehicle in the world.

Imagine adding all that weight to a modern car. Doing so immediately stresses the suspension mightily, even for a vehicle as rugged as a 1500-class pickup truck. As a result, U.S. Armor often needs to install heavier-duty suspension components. However, Engen said most modern SUVs and trucks with air suspension tend to handle the additional load better.

Partly because of that heft, the heart of Engen’s business, as expected, involves armoring Suburbans and Cadillac Escalades. The Mercedes S-Class sedan is another popular pick.

Reinforcing Your Modern Armored Car Takes at Least 3 Months

U.S. Armor keeps a running stock of popular makes and models in production. If a customer brings their own car, and U.S. Armor already has the glass molds completed, the armoring process usually takes about 3 months. Entirely new models require new glass molds. Therefore, they typically take longer — in the realm of 4½ months.

The newer the car, the more difficult the process becomes; the increasing use of electronic sensors makes for a tougher challenge. Older, simpler trucks and SUVs in particular require less computer science.

Attacks Can Mean Hacks, Not Just Guns

“Most people don’t realize that cars can be hacked,” Engen told me. “There’s people that have done it and they can turn your car off. There’s one person we heard about that actually took control of an electric car and could control the throttle on the car, obviously lock the doors, they could lock you in.”

This goes beyond fooling the sensors in the CAN bus to accept a wider variance in suspension load, too. Modern cars feature a range of connectivity options, from Bluetooth to GPS navigation to onboard Wi-Fi and satellite radio, all of which create vulnerabilities.

To learn more, Engen introduced me to his Vice President of U.S. Armor’s Cyber Security Division, Trent Clark.

Digital Vulnerability in the Modern Era

Clark specializes in cyber warfare and IT security. He spent 25 years in military special operations, including time in the infamous Asymmetric Warfare Group. He still contracts for the federal government but also handles U.S. Armor’s digital security. Clark ran me through the pros and cons of modern vehicles when it comes to protecting high-net-worth individuals.

“Everything you know, you live, work, play, you touch, it’s all interconnected,” he said. “You have to look at anything that emits a signal, right? Anything that emits a signal is a threat vector.”

The pros of modern vehicle software security largely make sense. For one, armored cars can, by definition, drive around. That presents a difficult target for would-be hackers who are more accustomed to breaking into static data centers or computers. Plus, when the car is parked, most of the connectivity systems turn off. Unlike a home or office Wi-Fi network, for example.

These attributes help, but Clark told me that bad actors can still easily access most vehicle functions anyway. Imagine being able to connect to a car’s ECU via a Wi-Fi handshake from a coffee shop and then turning off the input signal from a crankshaft position sensor. Boom, the car stops running. Now, it becomes an easy static target for either physical action or digital intrusion.

He Can Tell You, But Then He’d Have to … You Know

Much of Clark’s work involves setting up firewalls, both through installing hardware and software, to prevent quick and easy access to the onboard electronics. He refers to “low-hanging fruit” often, citing how much the average high-net-worth individual might use encryption and firewalls at home and at work but not while on the road.

Even presenting a slight — pun intended — roadblock then takes advantage of the mobile nature of an armored vehicle. So, in that case, hackers will be much more likely to try to access information from static targets.

Of course, Clark can’t reveal everything that he does to protect these cars, since doing so would effectively reduce the usefulness of his job. But he explained that integrating digital protection into onboard electronics is typically easier via software than hardware — though U.S. Armor regularly does both.

Even OEMs Recognize Digital Threats

He told me that automotive manufacturers increasingly recognize the vulnerabilities of digitally connected cars, too. Typically, the more expensive the car, the better the encryption. Clark drives a 2020 BMW, as an example, and found its security level fairly refined out of the box. Yet even with his own countermeasures installed, he still only uses his phone for GPS navigation, not the onboard system.

OEMs are taking a number of strategies to heart, especially after a famous video surfaced showing hackers remotely bricking a Jeep. Now picture a modern EV that can receive over-the-air updates …

Clark said that the best way to meet government compliance standards is to “hide the noise.” As one example, a car’s software could mask critical functions being performed via Wi-Fi by making it look like regular Google search traffic. Changing the digital signature of a car will only go so far, though, and the longer software has been out in the world, the more known exploits come to light.

Educating Customers About Threats Is Critical

Consumers typically don’t think about these threat vectors, as Clark calls them. Part of U.S. Armor’s job when speccing a new client’s vehicle then involves explaining how modern electronics turn vehicles essentially into data centers more than anything else.

“It’s no longer just about bodyguards and bulletproof glass,” Clark said. “It’s about securing your data, the devices in your networks, before an attack ever happens.”

The vehicle itself may or may not even be the target, but this connectivity creates new opportunities that go far beyond anything that bulletproof glass, pepper spray, and smoke machines can protect. U.S. Armor’s clients do predictably come from all over the world, though typically from the private sector.

Future plans include adding FLIR thermal imaging capabilities, building a dedicated multipurpose tactical vehicle, and improving dedicated inter-vehicle comms systems, high-speed Wi-Fi, and AI-based anti-hacking software.

U.S. Armor Is Not Cheap, But Armored Cars Are Invaluable

U.S. Armor Group typically builds around 300 vehicles a year at two facilities in the United States. An Escalade equipped with the full B6 rifle armor and explosives ballistic package, plus a basic combination of digital protection, starts at around $285,000.

For most buyers of armored cars, that investment probably seems like a drop in the bucket — especially after learning about not just the physical threats but also the digital vulnerabilities that cars present these days.