It's finally happened, the Flipper Zero has been banned.
I'm looking at you, Canada.
Also in your hacking news roundup: The feds have identified hackers targeting water facilities,
and Wikileak's Vault 7 source has finally been sentenced
But first, Canada is banning the Flipper Zero in an attempt to stop people stealing cars.
"First things first, we need to stop these criminals who are part of gangs and organised
crime", "of course one of the best things we can do to prevent auto theft is prevent
those thefts from happening in the first place, the fact is, it's become too easy for criminals
to get sophisticated electronic devices that make it simple for example to copy car key
fobs".
Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada is talking about the flipper zero, which is actually
mentioned by name on the Canadian government website, as the device that is specifically
being targeted by new laws that'll completely ban the import and sale of them.
But is this humble hobbyist device, adorned with a cheerful dolphin really a car cracking
criminal's best friend?
No, forget best friend, Flipper Zeros are nowhere to be seen in a car thief's toolkit.
Look at it like this, in 2022, 100 thousand cars were stolen across the whole of Canada,
of that how many were confirmed to have been stolen using a flipper zero?
Well, clues in the name, Zero.
So, why the ban?
The problem, is low-information politicians spending too much time on social media, and
watching videos like this - which seem to actually show someone hacking into a car using
a Flipper Zero.
In the first half of the video, the guy talks about megahertz and rolling codes, but that's
confusing so being a low-information politician we'll just skip to the end, where the Flipper
Zero is used to unlock a car from a couple hundred meters away.
Wow, that looks pretty dangerous, how can this thing be legal, where's my ban hammer!
But what's really going on here?
The guy in the video has used the flipper to clone the code from his key fob and is
just replaying it in order to unlock his car.
However the reality is that almost every car made since the 90s uses something called 'rolling
codes', as in every time the key fob is used, it generates a brand new code to unlock the
car, which as soon as it's used expires, so the code just won't work again.
So in order to successfully pull off the hack shown in the video, you have to be out of
range of the car when you record the code, to ensure the car doesn't receive the code
which would immediately invalidate it.
And even then you can only use that recorded code once.
In an irl scenario after you've parked your car and walked away you aren't obviously aren't
going to be even touching your key fob, so whilst this hack makes for an interesting
video, it's completely useless for criminals.
The reaction to Canada's ban has been one of confusion with the Flipper Zero team themselves
just in total shock.
However the problem of car thefts using technological methods is a real problem, but it has absolutely
nothing to do with Flipper Zeros.
A guy comes up to your door in the dead of night and holds what looks like some kind
of wire loop up to your house, seconds later your car unlocks and the bad guys drive away.
This is an example of a relay attack, it specifically affects newer cars that use keyless entry
systems.
Bad guys use specialised equipment - easily purchased online, in order to boost the signal
from the fob in your house, so it'll unlock your car.
This kind of car theft is a massive problem, but it can't just be legislated away with
a ban hammer.
Canada isn't alone in banning flippers, last year Brazil started seizing shipments of Flipper
Zeros, and Amazon has actually banned the sale of them for being a quote "card skimming
device".
The US has slapped sanctions on six Iranian government hackers thought to be members of
the "Cyber Av3ngers".
The "Cyber Av3ngers" is a pro-Palestinian hacker group which has been very active throughout
the Israel-Hamas war.
They've become famous for messing with water facilities in western countries, in particular
they've been targeting facilities that use 'Unitronics PLCs' - a PLC or "Programmable
Logic Controller" is a piece of tech that's used to control pumps and valves, monitor
chemical concentrations in water, they're essentially *the thing* that's used to interface
with industrial machinery.
And "Unitronics" is a certain brand of PLC that's made in Israel, hence why "Cyber Av3ngers"
is targeting them, these guys consider anything made in Israel to be fair game.
In one instance the group targeted a water facility in Pennsylvania, hacking a PLC used
to regulate water pressure and repurposing its display to advertise their group.
This hack actually resulted in the facility having to switch to manual operations, however
apart from being very inconvenient for the workers that day, the actual water supply
wasn't disrupted.
The same can't be said for a small community in Ireland - after the"Cyber Av3ngers" successfully
hacked a local water facility, 160 households had their water supply cut off for 2 whole
days.
After each operation, "Cyber Av3ngers" of course brags about it on their Telegram channel,
posting screenshots of the systems they've hacked as well as leaking any data they managed
to steal.
These hacks seem pretty sophisticated in a world where a typical hacktivist operations
means just a basic boring DDoS attack, however these campaigns actually weren't sophisticated
in the slightest and are thought to have been made possible simply by a really bad default
admin password on these Unitronics devices, '1111'.
At first the "Cyber Av3ngers" was thought to just be yet another 'hacktivist' group.
But, US authorities claim that this group is actually run by Iran and has announced
that they've identified six military hackers behind it and added them to OFAC's "SPECIALLY
DESIGNATED NATIONALS LIST".
Now, of all the lists the government keeps, this is one you most definitely do not want
to be on, it basically prevents any US person or business from ever interacting with you
financially in any way - anyone who so much as sells you a cheeseburger could potentially
be liable to some pretty extreme penalties.
It's essentially the closest thing that the US government has to an irl block list.
An ex CIA employee accused of leaking data to wikileaks has just been sentenced to 40
years in prison.
There's a bit of a story behind this one.
Back in 2016 "Joshua Schulte" was working in the 'CCI' or the 'Center for Cyber Intelligence'
- a unit within the CIA that deals in offensive cyber operations against America's adversaries.
Joshua did not get on with his colleagues and after a bit of a falling out, he was transferred
to different branch within the CCI and his admin privileges were revoked.
However he secretly restored those admin privileges and used them to steal a copy of the 'entire
CCI tool development archives', the contents of which were vast, we're talking the CIA's
entire hoard of zero day exploits, custom malware suites, this dump has been described
as the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.
However, whilst the CIA found out about the unauthorised admin privileges and gave him
a slap on the wrist, no one knew he'd stolen the CIA's crown jewels and so nothing else
was done.
In the coming months Joshua sent those stolen files to Wikileaks, and in 2017 they published
them under the name 'Vault 7' in what became the largest leak of classified information
in CIA history.
Despite Joshua's good opsec of using tails and tor to manage and transfer the stolen
files, it didn't really matter; because when the CIA launched an internal investigation
into the leaks, the guy who was known to have gained unauthorised admin privileges automatically
became the prime suspect.
The feds interviewed him and caught him in a whole web of lies.
After searching his apartment, not only did they find some of those files, but also thousands
of images of CSAM, cheese pizza, whatever you want to call it.
Now there's been a lot of controversy about that CP, I mean - it is pretty convenient
for the feds to find that kind of thing on his computer after he's been accused of all
those other crimes.
However in response to the CP charge, he didn't really deny it and claims he was just hosting
files on behalf of other people, and said besides it's just a "non-violent, victimless
crime".
So, yea he does not come across like a guy who's just had CP planted on his computer
by the CIA, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that he's some kind of an Edward Snowden
like figure, leaking the CIA's hacking secrets for what he believes to be the greater good.
The guy just seems like someone who wants to watch the world burn, but if you disagree
feel free to let me know in the comments.
His initial trial took place in 2020, however it was eventually declared a mistrial after
the jury just couldn't come to a decision.
In his retrial he chose to represent himself, which turned out to be a bad idea because
he was convicted on nine counts, and now, 7 years after vault 7, the 35 year old has
just been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
As always thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video, have a good one.