I work for a company of under 100 employees in a small city. Our head IT guy bought a Flipper Zero with his own money so he could make sure our building key fobs couldn't be easily copied.
If this guy can do it, I think the bajillion dollar auto industry can figure out a solution!
A single guy does not have 3 layers of managers and bosses above him, who have "better ideas", costscutting policies and "i have no idea what you just explained to me, so lets just not do it!".
I understand and appreciate the point of the childish look of the f-zero, but I often find myself wishing it was in more of a phone or phone case form factor.
Why? No one questions a phone in your hand. You can be literally anywhere, including places that disallow phone usage, and no one is going to bat an eye. But a f-zero raises questions. I can’t tell you have many times I’ve been asked “what is that thing?”
And now, it’s reached a level of popularity that people will recognize it for what it is. It’s not generic looking, in fact quite the opposite. Whereas a long, wide, thin black box looks like every other phone out there.
Yes? Pen testing is often “I am hiring you to see how far you can get into the company infrastructure under these constraints.” This includes human interaction, and humans can be a barrier to a pen test.
Part of that is going to be looking as innocuous as possible. Though admittedly that isn’t always the case. This kinda gets blown away when someone goes “oh look, that’s a flipper zero, aren’t those used for hacking?”
Ah okay, I see the confusion. A lot of people think pen testing is just “try to break into our app” or “try to get into our network” but those are usually narrow scope pen testing.
If you truly want to test your security, you can never rule out physical access. You could have the most secure network in the world and it would mean nothing if you kept it in an unlocked room in a publicly accessible area.
And you’d be surprised by the number of times pen testers gain access to those rooms because of human mistakes.
I’ve used it in multiple places that I don’t like the questions. Hospitals when the tv remote has been “misplaced” (aka staff doesn’t give a fuck and someone stole it,) bars (with permission,) entry into hotel rooms, at my work because I forgot my badge.
And as mentioned, pen testing. Though not professionally and just at the office (with permission) to see how far it could get (surprisingly far actually, with the right badge.)
The thing about it is though, it stands out to an extreme. Even if I have it out on a table while sitting down (it’s rather bulky for a pocket) people take notice and ask what it is. “It’s like a universal remote” just raises more questions.
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 crimeandlet's ban the toy we just saw on TikTok.
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.
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".
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.
Im a security professional who works to harden medical devices.
I use the flipper zero to easily test many different protocols that would be a pain in the ass to do "manually".
The flipper makes it easy for me to verify IR, sub GHz, USB, SPI, and many other protocols while being able to walk around the devices I test.
Without the flipper I could totally do these checks with homebrew tools, a pi and an rtlsdr (unless thats gonna be illegal too?) But it would take me writing new tools and procedures rather than the ease of the flipper.
Anybody in the know can tell you that the hardware isn't anything special, and like many others have said, its like making a swiss army knife illegal cause the toothpick can be used to pick a lock.
This isn't gonna stop anybody, if pentest tools are showing flaws in your product, maybe we should send flippers to the car manufacturers and tell them to fix their shit. You shouldn't be allowed to sell a car that can be wirelessly hacked like this, just like how the FDA doesn't let you sell medical devices that can be hacked like that.
My girlfriend has a medical implant for her gastroparresis. How concerned should we be? If that device shuts off, she can’t eat, and there’s only a handful of doctors in the country that can work on it, and the one that sees her is often booked two weeks out
The thing is, if there's a wireless exploit/hack that can cause "patient harm" the FDA+Health Canada would force a recall the sec its publicly known.
The flipper wouldn't be the only thing able to exploit it, anybody with a radio and some software would be able to. It just so happens the flipper can also do it cause its a swiss army knife and has a general purpose radio.
Generally by the time an attack exists on the flipper, its already been mastered on laptops and raspberry pis and stuff, putting it on the flipper is more to make it available to test easily without having to lug out the laptop. Nobody is inventing new exploits for such underpowered hardware as the flipper. People are porting known exploits to it.
I can't say how concerned you should be, but this won't make her any safer than before, equal risk. Just as likely someone with a laptop in a backpack doing that. We don't make laptops illegal tho.
What I would be concerned about is the idea that the company that makes the implant would not be able to easily test for issues in the implant with such an "illegal" device. Yes they could use a laptop, but you don't use an xray machine to find a stud, you use a handheld studfinder cause its cheap and easy.
the flipper wouldn’t be the only thing able to exploit it
No, and I never once thought these capabilities were unique to the Flipper. My concern is how much it lowers the barrier of entry to potentially dangerous behavior. When people say they got one “just to be evil”, it’s deeply concerning. If someone said the same thing about a gun, something else that can be dangerous and needs to be handled responsibly, I’d be notifying someone. It’s not the capabilities themselves, it’s how accessible it makes those capabilities to the otherwise-inept
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.
RollJam and RollBack are the exploits for bypassing rolling codes. These exploits are possible because you can replay captured codes at a later time.
What's happening in most cases is the proximity-based fobs are simply amplified with a device to reach the person's car in the driveway, since most people keep their keys by the door, and in some cases even within reach of the car without a device. It's this low hanging fruit where the theft happens, or just a tow truck...
The Flipper is more of an enthusiast and pranking device. The devices used in actual thefts are like disposable $50 alibaba pieces of shit. Canada is effectively creating a clandestine market for simple radio amplifiers made from the most basic electronic components. As someone in Canada who used to build the classic cmoy Altoid-tin headphone amps to sell on etsy, this is tempting...
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.
Read everyone, this is hype, and Canada is being dumb on this one.
The Flipper Zero is also incapable of defeating keyless systems that rely on rolling codes, a protection that's been in place since the 1990s that essentially transmits a different electronic key signal each time a key is pressed to lock or unlock a door.
Most of this reaction is due to staged videos on TikTok and politicians not understanding technology. Maybe they'll stop a few joyriding kids, but car thiefs aren't using F0s.
Another way of saying that is moral grandstanding, which I kind of like better. I like the imagery of grandstanding, especially when describing politicians.
Hmm, I don't know the precise terminology, I meant bypass as a way to temporarily get around the rolling code system without actually breaking the code itself. You're probably right though
Dude I think I might pick one of these up just for the IR, I miss the good ol days of controlling my tv and tvs on the go with my phone. I need to find out what all else it can do (and only use the powers for good), the RFID and NFC and garage doors and all that sounds like it could be convenient.
