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Canada declares Flipper Zero public enemy No. 1 in car-theft crackdown

224 comments
  • canada just streisanded me into obtaining one of these. i cant wait to play with it

    even in its anger, canada helps. thanks!

    • I have one and I highly recommend the wifi card. I also have a slightly working Carbon Dioxide sensor - I say slightly because it's readings are consistently off when compared to my Aranet. Supposedly there's a way to calibrate, but I haven't had time to dig into it further.

      My only issue with the device is that I wish there were more tamagochi elements to the dolphin buddy.

  • It seems like maybe the problem is that automakers were able to widely market vehicles that use wireless protocols that are relatively easy targets for attack. This was never properly secure.

    Automakers should absolutely be held to higher standards (in general) than they are, and it's not likely that banning specific devices is going to have any measurable outcome here. It's pretty well known that people buy and sell malware, and people can just... make devices similar to a Flipper with cheaply and readily available hardware.

    This is just dumb posturing to avoid holding automakers and tech companies accountable for yet another dumb, poorly thought out, design feature.

    And obviously it doesn't stop at cars. It seems pretty clear that snooping on any feature using RFID or NFC tech is only going to become more widespread. Novel idea: what about using... actual keys as the primary method of granting physical access? Lock picking is obviously possible but a properly laid out disc-detainer lock is pretty goddamn hard to bypass even with the proper tools, and that skill can't just be acquired in the same way as with electronic methods of bypass.

  • This reminds me of IMSI catchers, which governors and mayors don't mind if law enforcement has them, but when your neighbor makes one out of a mail-order kit and a soldering gun then suddenly it's an instrument of terror.

    Oh and police aren't supposed to have them in the US, but no one punishes them for using one. It's inadmissible in court, so they have to parallel construct (id est, lie ) about how they got your location from an informant or through detection dogs or something.

    In fact, a lot of security is lax, and we don't bother until it's private interests rather than law enforcement that are using them with malicious intent.

  • I think people need more visibility over the electromagnetic spectrum, not less, to catch car thieves. This needs to be white hat into a car theft attempt detection kit.

  • At least the article did a good job of calling this ban the bullshit it is.

  • The problem, of course, is distinguishing between harmless and harmful use. There are painfully few things that are objectively good or bad.

    • Hey, I've seen your deleted post about trying to seed your instance.
      You seem to be the admin of a new instance.
      By default, your instance won't see any remote communities content until someone subscribes.
      Which is kind of a catch 22, because you kinda have to know about it to subscribe.
      To browse for communities:
      https://lemmyverse.net/communities
      You can then use your instance's search bar to fetch it initially in order to subscribe to it yourself.
      Which you've likely already done for this one.

      There's also a tool that can do this for you:
      https://lemmy-federate.com/ (which was formerly known as communityboost)
      Then again it may subscribe to things you aren't interested in, so that may or may not be for you.

      Cheers, welcome and good luck.

224 comments