- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Canada to ban the Flipper Zero to stop surge in car thefts::The Canadian government plans to ban the Flipper Zero and similar devices after tagging them as tools thieves can use to steal cars.
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Honestly, I am embarrassed with the whole “look like were doing something” shtick by my government. An expensive gathering of decision makers from various sectors, a National Summit, just to say: we are now gonna be soooo tough on crime and let’s ban the toy we just saw on TikTok.
Car theft was a major problem before 2010 until engine immobilizers became mandatory since 2007 on all vehicles made in Canada
Then everyone got too comfortable. The regulatory bodies and car manufacturers were too focused pretending doing some work and publishing all the buzzword-of-the-day “accomplishments” they were doing while patting each others backs without explicitely requiring manufacturers to comply/implement immediately anything. Meanwhile, manufacturers were happy to integrate almost off-the-shelf “children’s RC” car starter pack obfuscated through invisible/non-existent security and protected under dubious industrial secrets.
Obviously, criminals smelled the easy money. Starting around 2013 — mystery car unlocking device | 2015 — signal repeater car burglary, car thefts by relay attacks were known by automakers but ignored as one-offs, too technical, already dealt with by law enforcement to lets pretent it’s not that big of a problem or leave it to the police. Meanwhile, insurance claim replacement vehicles are selling like hotcakes and it is “convenient” to ignore the problem.
The following years various reprogramming theft become known and finally CAN bus injection — new form of keyless car theft that works in under 2 minutes or in depth investigation by Dr. Ken Tindell, becomes so easy, so cheap and widely available that even kids uses them to gain Youtube/TikTok followers.
Car hacking was a becoming serious concern during the pandemic, but now it’s simply ridiculous and as if current automaker included/provided anti-theft/GPS tracking were (un)knowingly made “defective”.
Hence, everyone is playing catch up and blaming left and right on who is responsible for this in-slow-motion public safety disaster.
Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, which includes Ford Motor Company of Canada, General Motors of Canada and Stellantis, said increasing the risk of prosecution is the most effective way to deter vehicle theft.
“And at the same time, providing more outbound inspection controls at the ports to prevent the flow of stolen vehicles to foreign markets by organized criminal organizations,” he added.
New vehicle safety standards have been published (rushed?) recently. We will see if all the panic settles down like after 2007.
Moreover, the exponential prevalence of car theft also laid bare the incredibly poor and ineffective security at the various ports of Canada. Unsurprisingly, it has been a known constant devolution:
(Reposting my same reply for a similar thread about the Canadian Government banning the Flipper Zero, please check my post history for the other thread)
What is a flipper zero?
I still don’t understand
The Flipper Zero is a portable and programmable pen-testing tool that helps experiment with and debug various hardware and digital devices over multiple protocols, including RFID, radio, NFC, infrared, and Bluetooth.
It’s basically a 2 way radio with tools for those who like to mess with the radio spectrum. That’s the most simple explanation I can make for such a device.
Pen-testing is short for penetration testing. Which is testing if you can break into the things. Like a locked office or a computer system, etc. Legally, it’s done to find flaws that need to be fixed before they are used nefariously.
Pen testing techniques and tools are essentially break in tools. In this case, a tool for mimicking car key fobs and the wireless signals they send to the car.
Pen-testing: penetration testing, basically good guy hacking to find security vulnerabilities so that they can be fixed, basically finding out how easy a security system is to penetrate.
Debugging: fixing problems in hardware and software
RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification), radio, NFC (Near Field Communication,) infrared, Bluetooth: different forms of wireless communication.
RFID is used for stuff like security tags on merchandise, car key fobs
NFC is similar (you could probably make an argument that NFC is basically a type of RFID) with a very short range used for things like making payments with your phone
Bluetooth you’re probably somewhat familiar with, in used for a lot of consumer electronics, wireless headphones, speakers, computer mice, etc.
All of those use radio waves in some form to pass information from one device to another.
Infrared uses a infrared light to send information, the most common use you’ve probably seen is for TV remotes, which is why you have to point the remote at the TV to work, you’re basically flashing an invisible flashlight at the sensor on the TV
This device can basically mimic any of those kinds of signals allowing it access, control, or bypass devices and systems that use those protocols.
This can be useful for people working on those kinds of systems, you don’t need to have the actual key card, remote, device, etc. to test it out, you can try a bunch of different configurations without needing to reprogram the card a bunch of times, and gives you a lot of options to test for different vulnerabilities and issues.
But those same capabilities make it attractive to people who would use it maliciously. If they don’t have the right security measures in place, something like this device could be used to gain access to secure areas by spoofing a key card, unlock cars, interfere with cell phones, snoop on wireless communications, gain access to a someone’s devices, etc.
It has a bunch of abilities, but the most important one is that it can recieve and transmit radio signals that can trick devices like remote door locks and garage door openers into thinking that a key was pressed to open them, but only if they don’t have proper security systems set up. It’s built for penetration testing on systems to see how secure they are
Never heard of these devices but now I kinda want one.
streisand effect they are going to be sold out everywhere now
They already were.
Personally, i would require car manufacturers to make their cars resistant to such trivial exploits, but this works too i guess
Eh it doesn’t really, there isn’t a surge in radio attacks on cars, it’s just a novel concept so people are feeling spooked
But I’m with you on your first point, security needs to be hardened and the only one who can truly do that is the manufacturer
But, but, what about their precious profits??
It’s the equivalent of banning paperclips because they saw a videoclip of somebody opening locks with a paper clip, and completely ignoring all other tools that can open a lock faster than using the key.
That’s fucking bullshit wtf. This is exactly like bad gun reform that comes from someone who doesn’t know shit about the thing they are trying to reform
Welcome to Canada. Turning dials that aren’t connected to anything is the specialty of our “leaders”.
“Flipper Zero can’t be used to hijack any car, specifically the ones produced after the 1990s, since their security systems have rolling codes,” Flipper Devices COO Alex Kulagin told BleepingComputer.
I guess Canada must have a ton of old cars?
Or the “rolling codes” have glaring implementation issues, but it is cheaper to ban the Flipper Zero than recall the cars, so the manufacturers made an executive decision… (⚠️ YouTube)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Rolljack attacks are absolutely not trivial to pull off and I am quite skeptical that a flipper can even do it reliably, if at all, since it requires reactively jamming the transmission after the attacker has already decoded it. I don’t believe these devices have enough power to reliably jam the key fob, much less the speed to do it reactively.
It also can’t be used to hijack cars produced before the 1990s, since they mostly don’t have keyless entry in the first place.
Good thing I ordered one a couple days ago
This has made me think that I should order one too. Must be a good tool if it needs to be made illegal.
You can break into thirty year old cars!
One question, has the Canadian police actually arrested people using the flipper to steal cars?
This is our government in a nutshell. Don’t like guns? Ban them from licensed owners instead of working against smuggling or changing the license requirement from a PAL to an RPAL. Don’t like gas cars? Ban them instead of working on public transit and infrastructure. Don’t like the flipper zero? Ban it instead of either licensing purchase and use like a billion other radio devices that exist, or holding car manufacturers responsible for ass security practices.
Can’t wait to find out what they don’t like next, I wonder what they’ll do? /s
Classic response, don’t hold the billion dollar corpos who actually design and manufacture the cars responsible. Ban the little device that exposes the flaws in their designs.
Yeah, let’s entirely outlaw pentesting while we’re at it. What could possibly go wrong? 🙈
Lets outlaw devices that could be used for pentesting while we’re at it. PCs, laptops, phones, etc.
Don’t forget paperclips, string, and aerosol cans. Hell, we should probably just ban wire altogether.
Lock picks are still legal in Canada
SDR manufacturers with billion dollar government contracts:
Brains. Technically that is the most useful device when pentesting. Along with curiosity. Altho on the former, I believe we, as a society, have actually started to…
It doesn’t even do that
Canada u okay
no
The only thing our lawmakers know how to do is ban things to look like they’re doing something when really they have no idea how to actually bring effectual change or fix the problems.
Flipper zero, foreign buyers, handguns…
We’re a country of 3 monopolies in a trenchcoat… run by a party of corrupt idiots, whose replacements look even more incompetent.
No we are not
Um… You don’t even need the flipper zero to steal a car. I’m not even sure it’s strong enough to emulate the key.
Pretty sure you can’t even use the Flipper in the way thieves are using cheap alibaba radio amplifiers on the proximity fobs that people keep near their front door…
People are cutting locks so we should ban long arm metal snips and angle grinders.
Go for the source, ban the locks
Might as well outlaw crowbars because they can be used to break into houses…
Fucking idiots who’s microwaves blink midnight for decades think they can make meaningful decisions about tech.
