According to a report by Wired, Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former employee at the Texas Auto Center, was arrested after allegedly using a web-based vehicle immobilization system to stop cars sold by the dealership from working.

The Auto Center reportedly used a system from Pay Technologies called Webtech Plus. Designed to remotely disable cars whose owners are behind on their payments, the system can be made to remotely honk a car's horn, or to prevent it from being started up.

Ramos-Lopez is said to have had his account on the system closed when he left, but commentators close to the situation said that he gained access using another employee's password. He was then allegedly able to set up a database of 1100 customers who had purchased vehicles from the Center's four dealership lots, said the Wired story. He was able to disable the cars and set off their horns.

Customers were calling the dealership in a confused state, asking why their horns were honking, and were forced to disconnect their batteries, said reports.

Cars controlled by the Webtech Plus system are manipulated using a hardware device installed behind the dashboard, which is sent instructions via a wireless pager network. Cars cannot be stopped while they are in motion.

According to Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia, Ramos-Lopez was "pretty good with computers", although the alleged hacker couldn't have been that good; investigators tracked him down by finding an IP address for offending Webtech sessions in system logs. You'd have thought that someone going to those lengths to gain revenge on a former automative employer would have taken the road less traveled, and perhaps researched something like Tor before sparking up their browser.