Canada to ban the Flipper Zero to stop surge in car thefts

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.

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.

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?

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.

I doubt this is the real reason they are being banned, it's just the excuse they came up with.

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

Canada u okay

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:

The devolution of port authorities in Canada has not been without debate over the past 70 years. This paper provides a brief introduction to the role of ports in Canada and then examines the history of port policy and devolution, concluding that past policies were considered to have failed due to their inability to respond to changing circumstances.

(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)

Might as well ban brains too, you need that to steal a car.

Never heard of these devices but now I kinda want one.

What is a flipper zero?

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

People are cutting locks so we should ban long arm metal snips and angle grinders.

Good thing I ordered one a couple days ago

Um.... You don't even need the flipper zero to steal a car. I'm not even sure it's strong enough to emulate the key.

“This here’s the Lockpocking Lawyer, and today we’re going to take a closer look at the Flipper Zero….”

One question, has the Canadian police actually arrested people using the flipper to steal cars?

Oh Canada...

How hard would it be to make a similar device?

this is funny.

Confidentiality incorrect

Good luck

The sheer cognitive dissonance of everyone in this thread saying "criminals don't follow laws so banning this will do nothing!!" But will turn around and say "dur it'll with guns though," is painful.