“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.

  • 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·
      12 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.