Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero • Hacker News Board

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#521

Post by heleninboodler » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #332

14 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be trivial to hard wire a kill switch to your fuel pump and have it hidden somewhere so no matter what thief’s can’t drive off with your car. Much cheaper and more secure as cars can be stolen from parking garages.

Put a kill switch in it they tow it. Put a Club in it they tow it and cut off the steering wheel. Put GPS on it they throw it in a faraday cage paintshop/train. Put a Dronemobile system in it the Police just won't investigate/track it down. Really just have to not keep property outside anymore. I used to do the "It's not a big deal, i have full coverage" but had a car stolen and they (insurance) treat you like absolu…

> had a car stolen and they (insurance) treat you like absolute trash when it happens.

You've said this twice, but what does it mean? I have had my car stolen twice and the insurance company didn't give me any trouble at all and just paid out.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#522

Post by swozey » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

hoofhearted wrote: post #388

swozey wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never, ever keep a car I care about outside anywhere near the city. I know everyone doesn't have the funds for that, but I'm sorry, we all know how rampant car thefts have gotten since before those 3 Q50s in this video were even purchased. I live in the busiest neighborhood in downtown Denver with which has rampant property theft, cats cut out etc non-stop. I own 2 vehicles and neither of them are ever parked…

Some of the issue here is that it’s actually a pretty nice area here in Baltimore, but our police force is currently understaffed and overworked. One big issue here regarding policing is that our city elected officials can’t tell the city police force what to do. You see, when the civil war broke out, the state took control of the police force so that the mayor couldn’t lead a confederate coup. Flash forward to today…

If you haven't traveled/lived in many major cities since covid, they are all the exact same now. None of the police are working. I'm in Denver now, previously Austin in 2019, Dallas 2020, Denver 2020+, and Denver banned qualified immunity so the police work even less. Seattle just did the same thing + IIRC king county is doing that "police cant lie on stand" or whatever law. I lived on 2nd and congress in Austin for 12 years until 2016 and the entire downtown has turned to absolute trash.

I'm sure its the same in Chicago, LA, Portland, Tampa, etc and I don't even need to ask.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#523

Post by Levitating » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:48 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

If crime is economically possible, it will exist. With a society large enough, statistically some people will fit the persona needed to be a criminal.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#524

Post by saint_fiasco » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:48 PM UTC

MeImCounting wrote: post #497

saint_fiasco wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bad, I was thinking in terms of the expensive remote start lock vs an even more expensive and safer remote start lock. But if the fancy insecure lock is more expensive, the problem should fix itself eventually, right? Consumers will switch back to the cheaper system of their own accord. It sucks for the people who bought the insecure cars without knowing, but banning insecure cars is not going to help them retroac…

Where I live the used car market is hot . It is hard to find a car made before 2012 because for the most part they are as reliable and fuel efficient as modern cars, are cheaper to repair, and cheaper to insure. I dont think they are so desirable just because they are more secure but they dont have remote start options so they are at least in part more secure than modern remote start cars. The problem I am getting at…

> there are no secure modern car options

I don't think there can be such a thing as a secure remote start option. The only way they can make it more secure than traditional keys is if they also make it less convenient to use than traditional keys, and then there is no point because the traditional keys will be easier and cheaper.

What happened is that consumers did not know that the remote keys were unsafe, and now they know.

What I don't understand is why insecure cars should be banned by law. Now that everyone knows about the issue, surely everyone will switch to a more secure system of their own accord.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#525

Post by sidewndr46 » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:48 PM UTC

hot_gril wrote: post #485

mywittyname wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That'd actually attract less attention that outright hotwiring a vehicle. Disagree. Depending on the approach taken, the theft can look like a legitimate owner getting into a car. Even the break the window and reprogram a key via ODBII port technique takes about a minute to complete. Plenty of people have posted videos of their cars being stolen (I'm part of several Camaro communities, which are big theft targets)…

Yeah, I broke into my own car recently using a coat hanger, nobody cared.

In college a friend of a friend locked themselves out of a car. A nearby police officer loaned him some tools to break the window of the car so he could get home that night.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#526

Post by patmorgan23 » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:49 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #414

pdonis wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just described the “rule of law” What the article is describing is not the rule of law. The rule of law would be: make theft a crime, and enforce that. Not : criminalize the use of security research tools to show which vehicles are more susceptible to theft. > What you seem to want is for civil law to be subordinated in favor of common law I think what the GP poster wants is to have the law limited to criminali…

Please list all of the “actual crimes”

I don't remember the terms but there's a category of crimes that are "crimes because that's what the written law says"(i.e. driving without a license) and "crimes that morally abhorrent and actual harm to someone"(i.e. murder, theft)

"Actual crimes" would be category 2.

Building or owning a flipper zero would be in category 1. (As would laws that ban things like owning/carrying lockpicks without being a licensed locksmith)

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#527

Post by darepublic » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

Thank you for this comment. I've had some similar thoughts and it's comforting to know that some people out there at least think like mindedly. Recently on my city they have been rolling out myriad automated speed cameras and red light cameras and my feeling about them is quite mixed. I feel like it's trying to create a world in which all infractions are flagged automatically without need for subjective judgement. Many people laud this kind of so called justice but I am quite concerned about it.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#528

Post by betimsl » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

Thank God I have an account so I can say this:

This is the most funny thing I've read in a while. Thanks for writing it man -- wiping tears.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#529

Post by vkou » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #320

keiferski wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting thought, but I would say instead that I'm in favor of culture being the "first line of defense" and not the law. In other words, I can leave my door unlocked because I am a part of a culture where that sort of thing doesn't happen. Not because there is a law written down somewhere. This has functionally been my experience in a number of spaces, including private workspaces (i.e., you don't expec…

The reason the rule of law exists at the scale it does is precisely because what you describe, has not shown to create functional long term societies that are resilient to exogenous threats. The rule of law is literally humanity’s best attempt so far to explicitly codify human desires into a common set of descriptions. This is why the UN exists and the LON before it etc…

> This is why the UN exists

To split hairs - the UN does not exist to be a world police (Its charter is explicitly built to ensure that it fails at that task).

It exists to be a forum for countries to talk to eachother. But its a purely voluntary engagement.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#530

Post by jack_h » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

nulbyte wrote: post #111

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

> Instead of discussing how car theft is fundamentally an unethical behavior, the discussion is about preventing some thing from being sold or existing, whether that be insecure vehicles or Flipper Zeroes. There are already laws against theft. They apply to vehicles, secure and insecure alike. A law mandating a minimum level of security, as GP suggests, seems to me to fit the suggestion, that auto manufacturers have…

This seems really bizarre to me and kind of dismisses the entire premise of this subthread.

So we have a particular activity - theft - which we as a society have deemed to be inappropriate and codified the punishment of such behavior into law. The law doesn't prevent such behavior, it merely lays out the punishment if one is caught and convicted which can be seen as a deterrent. However, vehicle theft still happens which leads us to this entire topic.

The suggestion is to impose requirements via law onto companies who make vehicles to prevent this theft; although interestingly enough no legal requirements for the manufacturer of the tool used in the commission of these crimes. The companies complying with such regulations will pass on the cost to the consumer just like the mandated safety features such as back-up cameras and so forth. So in essence we would be punishing all consumers by increasing the cost of a vehicle to prevent an unrelated third party from committing an already illegal act. Of course what is secure changes over time, so what is secure today may not be tomorrow for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure how that fits into the equation.

Keep in mind this is just one aspect of a vehicle out of many. We already have loads of regulations around vehicles from safety features to emission standards. When you say that a buyer presumably expects a lock to be resistant to this sort of attack you are adding to a very long list of things the buyer may or may not actually care enough about to spend their money on it. When do we admit that many, many different groups have convinced legislators to regulate what vehicles the public is allowed to have rather than pretending we are speaking for the consumer?

Please note that I am not saying all laws and regulations are bad, far from it. I do believe that there are no solutions in law, merely trade-offs which I alluded to above. My point here is to question if another law will actually fix the issue and if the knock-on effects are worth it. As a society we tend to pass laws that stay on the books long after we learn how damaging and counter-productive they actually are; e.g. the war on drugs. We also have an uncountable number of laws and regulations on the books; we literally don't know how many there are. So saying the only solution is more laws seems a bit like saying everything is a nail because all I have is a hammer.

You also brought up ethics in relation to manufacturers. I have to ask though, why do they have an ethical responsibility to prevent a bad actor from using a tool to steal their product from their own consumers? I'm having a really, really hard time agreeing with such an ethical responsibility. How much ethical responsibility can we really put onto manufacturers to prevent crime?