<
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/01/flipper-zero-panic-spreads-to-oz-cars-unaffected/>
"A feature of coming to adulthood for any young person in the last quarter of
the twentieth century would have been the yearly warnings about the danger of
adulterated Halloween treats. Stories were breathlessly repeated of apples with
razor blades in them, or of chocolate bars laced with rat poison, and though
such tales often carried examples of kids who’d died horrible deaths in other
far-away places, the whole panic was (as far as we know) a baseless urban
legend.
It’s difficult not to be reminded of those times today then, as we read news
from Australia warning about the threat from the Flipper Zero wireless hacking
tool. It has the same ingredients, of an imaginary threat earnestly repeated by
law enforcement officers, and lapped up by a credulous media with little
appetite for verifying what they print.
This is a story which first appeared in mid-February in Canada, when a
government minister singled out the Flipper Zero as a car theft tool and
promised to ban it. This prompted a storm of derision from tech-savvy Canadians
and others who immediately pointed out that vehicle security has long ago
eclipsed the capabilities of the Flipper, and that there are far more pertinent
threats such as those from CAN bus attacks or even RF boosters. Despite this
debunking, it seems to have spread. Where will Flipper Mania pop up next?
Canada and Australia are both countries with a free press; that press should be
doing their job on these stories by fact-checking and asking pertinent
questions when the facts don’t fit the story. When it comes to technology
stories it seems not doing this has become the norm."
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
