Oh shit, I wanted to steal a car but now because of this ban it will be illegal, how bad.
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.
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...
lol, you can do many things with a flipper zero. Stealing a car is not one of those things.
"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)
Next, ban radio waves, because car companies are too damn dense to create a proper product lol
Literally nobody is using flippers to steal cars. Grow the fuck up.
They're just doing it to get the votes of the people that see headlines like this and think it's a good thing without reading the article at all.
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.
Oh man, since it is banned, there's no way at all that anybody can get their hands on it. No possible way. /s
Might as well outlaw crowbars because they can be used to break into houses...
Fucking idiots who's microwaves blink midnight for decades think they can make meaningful decisions about tech.
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.
What is a flipper zero?
It has a bunch of abilities, but the most important one is that it can recieve and transmit radio signals that can trick devices like remote door locks and garage door openers into thinking that a key was pressed to open them, but only if they don't have proper security systems set up. It's built for penetration testing on systems to see how secure they are
Personally, i would require car manufacturers to make their cars resistant to such trivial exploits, but this works too i guess
That's all Trudeau has been good for, for years, attempting to appear to do something about a problem but never, never, ever, actually fixing anything, but also inconveniencing/ removing rights or making criminals out of ancillary people to the actual issue.
This is our government in a nutshell. Don't like guns? Ban them from licensed owners instead of working against smuggling or changing the license requirement from a PAL to an RPAL. Don't like gas cars? Ban them instead of working on public transit and infrastructure. Don't like the flipper zero? Ban it instead of either licensing purchase and use like a billion other radio devices that exist, or holding car manufacturers responsible for ass security practices.
Can't wait to find out what they don't like next, I wonder what they'll do? /s
Good thing I ordered one a couple days ago
This has made me think that I should order one too. Must be a good tool if it needs to be made illegal.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
