“Kia Boys will be Flipper Boys by 2026,” one person in the reverse engineering community said.

The tech used here is the popular Flipper Zero, an ethical hacker’s swiss army knife, capable of all sorts of things such as WiFi attacks or emulating NFC tags. Now, 404 Media has found an underground trade where much shadier hackers sell extra software and patches for the Flipper Zero to unlock all manner of cars, including models popular in the U.S. The hackers say the tool can be used against Ford, Audi, Volkswagen, Subaru, Hyundai, Kia, and several other brands, including sometimes dozens of specific vehicle models, with no easy fix from car manufacturers.

  • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    4 days ago

    TBF most of these are failures and exploits on older devices.

    Which are a dime a dozen across the entire industry. Security is rather difficult, especially when considering exploits and bugs.

    Ofc many of these ARE the results of cut corners, though many are just a lack of security awareness or old devices with known exploits discovered long after manufacturing.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      The lack of security awareness is due to them to scrooge to hire the right professionals for the job. It is 100% the result of cutting corners.

      • Jason2357@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        When a car is stolen, they typically get to sell another one, courtesy of the drivers insurance policy. They are incentivized to bad security.

        • 123@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          14 minutes ago

          Or built for a different market, like 90s Hondas/Nissans etc. which assumed every country was as safe as Japan when it came to car theft. Nowadays its mostly profit driven. Security is not cheap and can add it’s own set of headaches (security vs convenience).

          Edit: Nissan still sucked at it from what I remember hearing of those and some kias being the main target near where we lived.