Manufacturers secure their vehicles against unauthorized repair, not against theft.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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Also it's mostly security through obscurity. It is just difficult enough to dissuade most people, but not actually secure because that costs money.
Blaming the flipper zero for hacking is like blaming lockpicking tools for why masterlock sucks so much.
"And to prove it's not a fluke we'll do it again!"
This article convinced me to buy a flipper (I've been debating it for years). It's a super useful item that is absolutely going to get banned/hamstrung any day now for putting too much power into people's hands under the guise of "public safety".
I want it because it's so easy to use. I'm no hacker, but with a tool as convenient as this I'm sure I can piece some useful hacks together.
I did this the last time an article about Flipper Zero’s hacking abilities went viral. I was worried about the same thing. Never came to pass, but now I use it to find microchips in lost animals so it was worth it.
https://github.com/Next-Flip/Momentum-Firmware
You're gonna want this. Removes the locked down parts of the OFW, among other quality of life improvements.
It's not the firmware in the article but if you want that you'll have to find that loser's telegram yourself and pay him for serial locked horse shit.
https://github.com/djsime1/awesome-flipperzero
Also this. Bunch of files to help you get started. Uberguidoz repo (linked there) especially.
It's cool but not magic. If you're trying to fuck with something, you need to know what frequency it's on and what sort of signals do what. There is a bunch of preloaded stuff though, and a wide variety of tools like radio frequencies, nfc, Bluetooth, rfid, and infrared. So far the most useful thing I've done is turn the volume down on fox News on tvs in public areas.
Oh one thing I still have to try: some, maybe most handicap buttons for doors are actually radio frequency based and not hard wired, so if you can capture and replay the open signal, you could open a door without hitting the button and look totally jedi.
You can already do that by making the hand motion at an automatic door.
If someone ever calls you on it, just say that you find their lack of faith disturbing.
Canada already banned it. Wish I'd got one sooner
Pretty sure that ban was walked back?
It was indeed. My apologies. I guess the article walking back the ban didn't get as much traction as the one banning it.
No apologies needed. Although, ordering one before they reban it again may or may not be something to consider.
Why is 404media boosting anti-basic electronics fearmongering ?
I see this article more about reporting unfortunate news rather than boosting fear. The news seems to be "Car manufacturers don't take security seriously and people are exploiting it with a simple tool".
I'd rather hear about this now than wake up one day to see that my flipper is illegal because some politician watched a tiktok video.
I don't think it's merely "reporting unfortunate news" It's about the flipper zero, not really about car theft per say and shitty, evil car security system where the dealer scams you as much as the thief for a key.
There's really no reason we can't use contactless smartcards for this, and that we can't program them ourselves with open source software.
The flipper zero itself is completely irrelevant about this. It's just a generic ISM band transceiver ... Only of note to the ignorant and technologically incompetent, but the journos have made this the centerpiece of the article.
"ethical hacker's swiss army knife" I hate it when they always add "ethical". First of all, when you say ethical you mean law-fearing, they don't really care about ethics and, secondly, "regular" hackers use it too, so it's just a hacker's swiss army knife...
Dude, do you want individual hacking to become illegal? Because people who are not hacking daily are prone to forgetting that some hackers don't actually act maliciously.
Also, yes, some hackers are ethical and do care. Not you, obviously. But some.
Yeah, I definitely read that as an effort to preempt the folks who were going to yell about how clearly this means the Flipper Zero should be illegal. Hacking has been so poorly represented in TV and films that there are a distressing number of people who don't realize the term can even have a positive connotation.
I do not want any hacking device to be illegal, as they can be used for good(overthrowing the state and capitalism).
That's what you think is good about hacking? That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. That's what you get when you get your education from TV.
Hacking means "misusing/modifying crap to work how you want".
Ethical hacking is e.g. modifying devices you own to run software you want, like e.g. running homebrew software on a game console. It is finding and reporting security vulnerabilities so that companies can improve their security. It is modifying software or devices to e.g. removing privacy problems or tracking.
And ethical hacking and law-abiding hacking aren't the same either, since some ethical hacking activities might be illegal (e.g. violating restrictions on modifying devices) and some legal hacking activities might not be ethical (e.g. using legal hacking to dox people).
And ethical hacking and law-abiding hacking aren't the same either
I prefer saying 'grey hat' instead of 'ethical hacker' because ethical hacker is now used to mean 'pentester', 'red teamer' and all the other cybersecurity stuff, or so it seems to me.
that was the entire meaning of my comment, I clearly didn't make it clear enough.
All of that is under the umbrella term of ethical hacker. Black/grey/white hat are some very outdated and unclear terms, and also terms that non-tech people don't really understand.
Ethical hacker is a term that lay people also understand and because of that it has replaced the rest of these terms.
(And also, "ethical hacker" encompasses both the grey and white hat. So it's not an equivalent term to "grey hat".)
not doing something by fear of the law is not ethical. that said, some of them are ethical, but ethical hacker would mostly include grey hats, which they wouldn't want because they can't say illegal hackers use their device.
"ethical hacker" is not defined as "someone who only hacks in fear of law". That's my point. Hackers with ethics do lots of shit. Some of them work within the law, some of them work sideways to the law, but your code of ethics and your legal code aren't quite the same thing, and you assuming they are is surprising.
I'm pretty sure that's what's meant by 'ethical hacker' in most cases and that's why I wanted to point out the difference you are pointing out right now.
My ethical gun is safer than your criminal gun.
Tbf, unironically yes. The most dangerous part of a gun is the thing attached to the grip. A real "problem exists between keyboard and chair" situation.
The real issue here is that the systems that car manufacturers use for their vehicles are insecure and outdated. The Flipper Zero is just exposing their bad design decisions.
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If you can hack a car with a flipper zero, then the car manufacturers failed to implement the most basic security protocols. Complain to them, and demand a fix.
Give us fucking keys and BUTTONS. We dont want or need this tech shit they want to shove into everything so they can show cancerous growth to ther shareholders.
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And here I am just using my flipper zero to turn my fan on and off since the remote that came with it sucks.
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It is true that this device can be used nefariously. But it's just a computer with a wide variety of very basic and common communication methods along with software to exploit them. There are many other computers like it that are just less popular. And to ban it is to ban said basic communication hardware like radio, WiFi, NFC, etc.
The solution is to mandate companies to provide a minimum level of security. Even giant companies with good reputations have giant security holes, like Apple or your bank, implementing mandatory SMS as 2FA. That shit should be illegal.
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