131–140 of 341 posts
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It's a script kiddie tool that requires zero knowledge of radio theory and programming.
I've learned a lot from mine, especially how many types of access control RFID work. And I've been working on commercial SDR projects for the past decade.
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> By banning the device, a country would be setting back their workforce of engineers and scientists a bit. You're pulling a "Think of the children" here. Rest of your comment is fine, but this first statement doesn't hold water. Any incredibly small number of engineers and scientists would ever use this device. A Raspberry PI, Ardiuno, or other general purpose micro controllers and small form computing devices sure,…
The Flipper Zero is a small-form computing device that is immensely popular, not particularly niche. > Any(sic) incredibly small number of engineers and scientists would ever use this device. I personally know over a dozen people who own them and have tinkered with them in various ways. I managed to "break" my air conditioner unit (permanently setting it to C, not that bad of a "break") with one. Definitely less popu…
Numbers? I see in 2023 they did 80m rev which is what, half a million devices sold worldwide? That’s very niche. % wise close to 0; it’s a geek tool. Nice but not immensely popular.
This is like making lock pick sets illegal to carry unless you're a licensed locksmith. Didn't really stop criminals from getting or using them.
None of the articles on this are actually showing the numbers. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230727/cg-b0...
Car thefts have increased by a significant amount outside of their normal fluctuations, but they are still much much lower than they were before 2010. To call it a crisis is hyperbole. Canada's car thefts are the approximately the same rates as the US.
Flipper zero is a casualty of poor security practices, and the insurance companies need to be going after the car manufacturers for making it so easy. I would even say if it's so easy to bypass, then buttonless start should never have even been legal.
You can ban the flipper zero, but it does not seem that difficult to get them into the country nor does it seem difficult for criminals to make their own.
The Flipper Zero is a general-purpose tool and STEM educational device. By banning the device, a country would be setting back their workforce of engineers and scientists a bit. How can you use a Flipper Zero to steal a car? Flipper Zero can't crack hard encryption. Is the real problem that cars were made with security that they already knew was negligently weak at the time? If so, is a recall of those cars more appr…
A lot of vehicles - my wife’s 2015 Kia included - have a very flawed implementation of rolling key encryption. Basically, you need to capture three consecutive keys. The receiver is programmed to allow any future key (in case the fob was pressed away from the car), and will happily reset to past keys when you send three consecutive keys in sequence.
Ostensibly this is to avoid people’s fobs from becoming “unpaired” somehow if the car receives a future key. You just hit the button a few times and it works. In practice, it’s trivially easy to exploit.
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> By banning the device, a country would be setting back their workforce of engineers and scientists a bit. You're pulling a "Think of the children" here. Rest of your comment is fine, but this first statement doesn't hold water. Any incredibly small number of engineers and scientists would ever use this device. A Raspberry PI, Ardiuno, or other general purpose micro controllers and small form computing devices sure,…
RF devices are already ubiquitous, the technology and applications keep growing, and there's emerging opportunities for innovative applications. FWIW, I "funded" the Kickstarter for Flipper Zero because my startup was doing something a little innovative with various kinds of RF tags, to help solve a significant societal problem. (Which, besides what we could've contributed to a country in monetary value of our compan…
I agree with OP, it's bad that its being used to try and take down phones on flights and also if it's being used to steal cars.
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The Flipper Zero is a small-form computing device that is immensely popular, not particularly niche. > Any(sic) incredibly small number of engineers and scientists would ever use this device. I personally know over a dozen people who own them and have tinkered with them in various ways. I managed to "break" my air conditioner unit (permanently setting it to C, not that bad of a "break") with one. Definitely less popu…
> immensely popular Numbers? I see in 2023 they did 80m rev which is what, half a million devices sold worldwide? That’s very niche. % wise close to 0; it’s a geek tool. Nice but not immensely popular.
This just means that only criminals will use Flipper Zero. And they were already stealing cars. I don’t think they will mind one additional illegal activity. But how many previously law abiding citizens will be hurt by not having this technology, or becoming criminals now?
How does one use an FZ to steal a car? I think the point is that it’s impractical bordering on impossible.
So if I'm reading this right, they're banning something that is too underpowered to run the exploits people are using to steal cars (which are only possible in the first place because car companies' threat model is mostly about their customers rather than thieves) in order to pretend to do something about car theft I've been pretty happy on balance with measures introduced through direct democracy in recent years (mo…
The main problem with direct democracy as performed in the US is that it's trivial to manipulate with sufficiently large ad campaigns, because the average voter is not super well informed on most topics and is usually not motivated to dig deeply when i.e. a ride-sharing company spends a cool hundred million to get the legal outcome they want. This is not to say that the alternative is immune to these problems, but as…
If you want to do real damage there are portable SDRs that can jam GPS and transmit just about any arbitrary radio signal from DC to 6GHz for less than $500. This is a mildly powerful toy that has a large, intelligent and curious community around it.
The reality is RF stuff is wildly under-explored right now outside of military spaces. On the consumer side I'd guess we're somewhere around the early 2000s internet in terms of security posture. It's probably best to consider the flipper community to be a gift of minimally destructive pentesters relative to what they could be if someone wanted to actually dish out real electronic warfare.