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.
Oh shit, I wanted to steal a car but now because of this ban it will be illegal, how bad.
Yeah, since we can’t stop murderers, we should do nothing about it.
Banning flipper is exactly that- doing nothing- because you can’t actually use one to steal a car.
The thing we should do is to hold car manufacturers accountable for neglecting security in cars.
Remember, the “s” in IoT stands for security.
nice one
Flipper Zero can’t be used to hijack any car, specifically the ones produced after the 1990s, since their security systems have rolling codes
So actually doing nothing.
“If you want to stop murders just ban kitchen knives.” --canadian politicians
Let’s establish an international anti-murder day. It won’t save anyone, but at least we did SOMETHING!
We can’t stop murderers, so let’s band all guns, knives, baseball bats and tire irons.
I do agree with the gun part, the rest are up to serious debate.
They were being sarcastic.
I know.
They should really try banning car theft, it’s a lot more direct and to the point.
But at least they can persecute tinkerers and cyber security professionals while the criminals continue to steal cars.
It’s win-win for the POS in law enforcement. They create more crime stats for themselves to ensure their increased funding, and the criminals continue stealing cars.
Even better, tinkerers and cyber security professionals are easy to find and there’s a much lower chance of them fighting back compared to actual car thieves so it’s very low risk for the police. They get to be lazy and safe while padding their numbers, all their favorite things at once.
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I’m confused, do you think that systemic issues aren’t a major factor in all crime, especially theft?
I do think its a factor, i dont think the solution is just letting car theives walk away because they are in a tough spot. That thief will just keep stealing cars and they will get better at it the more they steal and more confident the more they know they won’t be prosecuted.
I didn’t see the comments that said we should let car thieves walk away
This person who is insisting we punish low level criminals because they all will turn into high level criminals needs to stop playing GTA, pay a bill or two in life, and realize that poverty creates desperation, and in fact, locking up “low level” criminals actually exposes them to the more hardened ones who have turned it into a lifestyle.
If you don’t get thrown in a cage with dangerous people and treated like an animal, your odds of rehabilitation skyrocket.
Exposing people to violence, punishment and harder criminals is the least productive way to rehabilitation.
Them: if someone’s getting caught stealing their third car then clearly jail doesn’t work to stop them from doing that and maybe we should think of trying something else?
You: they want to just let car thieves walk free!
See what makes you look silly?
you’ve linked entire community, not single thread
I did initially but I edited it and it seems to work for me
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !canada@lemmy.ca
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.
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
lol, you can do many things with a flipper zero. Stealing a car is not one of those things.
Well it can give access to a car. Soooo…
Butter knives can be used to murder people. Quick let’s ban them to solve all murder.
JFC.
He/she stated that you can’t steal a car with a flipper. But you can. That it isn’t a go to tool is something else.
Besides this, you can use a flipper as a butter knife…
Snow fucking white.
Yes it can be used to steal some cars.
Banning it because it can be used to steal cars doesn’t make sense
Btw… Some folks may not realize it is a go to tool for many things.
Flipper Zero - Wikipedia Flipper Zero is a portable Tamagotchi-like multi-functional device developed for interaction with access control systems. The device is able to read, copy, and emulate RFID and NFC tags, radio remotes, iButton, and digital access keys, along with a GPIO interface.
It is a swiss army knife for RF access control systems as well as harmless, related things like remote controls.
It is used by penetration testers (information security professionals) to do myriad kinds of legit, legal work in their field.
Like any tool it can be used for good or evil. The problem isn’t the tool but the vulnerabilities in cars demonstrating shocking negligence on the part of manufacturers.
Banning the tools just gives us a false sense of security. The vulnerability still exists. It isn’t that difficult for someone to either get the tool, reproduce the tool, or make a new tool with existing parts. Meanwhile law abiding people cannot find the vulnerabilities as easily.
This mostly only serves to penalize a smallish company and protect large car manufacturers from the consequences of their negligence.
It is already illegal to steal cars. Why would criminals risking felony jail time care about whether their tools are suddenly illegal, too?
“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.
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.
Next, ban radio waves, because car companies are too damn dense to create a proper product lol
I’m surprised no fobs use a time-based token to prevent replay attacks. Would make it a bit of a bitch to replace the battery, but hey-ho, tradeoffs.
They use rolling codes that aren’t susceptible to FlipperZero anyway. This is a dog and pony show.
they use rolling codes
All of them? Source?
It’s been that way for a long time, it’s just kinda the accepted way. The vehicle builders had seen what garage door systems problems came about from hard-switched or dip-switched codes and just went that way from the start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_keyless_system#Security
The newer vehicles have these always-on systems now, the owner doesn’t have to press a specific button. So theives can amplify the fob signal that’s constantly being emitted in the house and get the car to open, then program new keys once they’re in the vehicle and drive away. But that has nothing to do with the Flipper, that’s just a radio repeater.
More of an issue with the fob being to connect to a service to get the current time. Technically possible, but would add cost. And if that time is ever out of sync it just won’t work.
I can put an RTC in an Arduino for about $8. It keeps time accurately. If it gets out of sync, maybe a Bluetooth connection to let it do an NTP request through another device.
Cellular connectivity is not required.
RTC’s are not inherently accurate. You have an RTC in your computer, but disconnect it from the internet for a year and it’s extremely unlikely it will be able to pass an OTP check.
Add to that the fact that RTCs run off power, means that the fob would need to actively pull from the battery 24/7. What happens when that battery voltage drops below the required power level? The time goes out of sync. Not to mention you need to change the battery at some point.
Adding Bluetooth would be a terrible idea. You’d then need to make sure the device can receive firmware updates, and we all know the reputation car companies have for updates to things.
Better option would be to receive the date and time from a transmission, be it FM or cell. And no, you wouldn’t have to pay for cell.
The problem comes when you’re in an area that doesn’t have these available, which is still quite possible in the US.
So we loop back to these not really being that viable. They will work most of the time, in most instances. But they’d be shooting themselves in the foot in certain places and with certain users.
Challenges-reponse protocols are what’s needed
Instead of a time based token they should have authentication. To start the car you need biometric or passcode or Bluetooth to connect and the fob.
For the life of me I don’t understand why my phone has better security than my car.
Cause what’s in the title is normal news. That’s why. Dumbasses having power to decide for us that it’s the tools to blame.
I doubt this is the real reason they are being banned, it’s just the excuse they came up with.
They just want to appear to be doing something, even though they aren’t doing anything useful.
Another distraction for the big problems not getting solved
Oh man, since it is banned, there’s no way at all that anybody can get their hands on it. No possible way. /s
Just like guns.
Exactly, ban anything and only those you call “ctiminals” will have them.
I’ve never called anyone a “ctiminals”
Damn touch keyboard LOL
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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…
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”.
That’s not how thieving works….
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)
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.
Do it, they’re a lot of fun to play with.
Personally, i would require car manufacturers to make their cars resistant to such trivial exploits, but this works too i guess
But, but, what about their precious profits??
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
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.
This, but apparently they already did this in 1990. Though it sounds like this might instead make the fob go out of sync and no longer work, but that’s also on the manufacturers.
Also I wouldn’t be surprised if phones could be made to do radio signal recording and playback. You might need a USB ADC/DAC and antenna, but it’s not like this device is doing something really sophisticated for this particular attack.