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https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/05/restricting-flipper-is-a-zero-accountability-approach-to-security/>
"On February 8, François-Philippe Champagne, the Canadian Minister of
Innovation, Science and Industry, announced Canada would ban devices used in
keyless car theft. The only device mentioned by name was the Flipper Zero—the
multitool device that can be used to test, explore, and debug different
wireless protocols such as RFID, NFC, infrared, and Bluetooth.
While it is useful as a penetration testing device, Flipper Zero is impractical
in comparison to other, more specialized devices for car theft. It’s possible
social media hype around the Flipper Zero has led people to believe that this
device offers easier hacking opportunities for car thieves*. But government
officials are also consuming such hype. That leads to policies that don’t
secure systems, but rather impedes important research that exposes potential
vulnerabilities the industry should fix. Even with Canada walking back on the
original statement outright banning the devices, restricting devices and sales
to “move forward with measures to restrict the use of such devices to
legitimate actors only” is troublesome for security researchers.
This is not the first government seeking to limit access to Flipper Zero, and
we have explained before why this approach is not only harmful to security
researchers but also leaves the general population more vulnerable to attacks.
Security researchers may not have the specialized tools car thieves use at
their disposal, so more general tools come in handy for catching and protecting
against vulnerabilities. Broad purpose devices such as the Flipper have a wide
range of uses: penetration testing to facilitate hardening of a home network or
organizational infrastructure, hardware research, security research, protocol
development, use by radio hobbyists, and many more. Restricting access to these
devices will hamper development of strong, secure technologies."
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
