Flipper Zero: Can It Really Be Used To Steal A Car?

hello everyone something you might not know about me is up until about 5 years ago I was an automotive locksmith my job mainly entailed showing up to vehicles that no longer had any working keys and then generating and programming new keys to them from scratch while I haven't been in automotive lockmith for a number of years I still have a bunch of my old tools I didn't want to sell them as I'll often cut in program keys for friends and family save them some money and sa from making a trip to the uh the dealership so my interest in F ID actually stems from discovering that I could clone an old work related access badge using a car key cloner I was able to scan the card and write the data to an automotive transponder and gain access to the building years later and this is still a tool I'll use fairly frequently when playing around with RFID tags so here's a access tag shows up as an id13 take a T5 transponder and clone success so you see the data there we're going to back out read it again and the data is the same so naturally when I got my flipper zero I had to see what if any car keys it could read I found it could read and emulate a couple of older transponder types but we'll get into that in a minute modern car keys just aren't as simple as they used to be some older vehicles stft to turn systems operated just like a modern basic level access control system just a simple data check the transponder fixed data was programmed to the car and when the key was turned the induction coil around the ignition would power up the transponder and the transponder would transmit its data to the vehicle if the data matched up the car would start nice and simple nowadays Automotive theft deterrent systems operate the same way but the technology has advanced significantly it's not just a simple fixed data check anymore there's encryption involved Point Blank you're not doing anything to a modern vehicle immobilizer system with the flipper zero using RFID or NFC apps getting back to the old vehicle transponders what exactly can the flipper zero do with some of them this is an older uncut Honda key the plastic is translucent which is perfect for this as you can see the ceramic transponder chip located inside of the head unlike some of the other transponders in use today this key can actually be read by The Flipper zero it's decoded as an em4100 tag now if we scan the key with my xhorse cloner we can see that it's detected as an id13 transponder and if we emulate the same key with the flipper zero the exact same data is displayed so what does this mean does it mean you can actually steal a car with with the flipper zero the shorter answer is no the long answer is yes but it certainly has a few caveats and the number of vehicles that use a transponder chip like this one here is incredibly small sure the fixed data from the car key can be replayed but the mechanical ignition is still present preventing you from just emulating the data and driving off you need to pick or Force the ignition over or You' just need a brass duplicate of the key of course you'd also need access to the key before hand this isn't something you can just sit and Brew force with an RFID app ultimately today there are very very few Vehicles driving around using these transponders they're used on immobilizer systems that are well over 20 years old and this isn't something specifically related to The Flipper zero these chips transponders whatever you want to call them they can be read and cloned by devices you can get on Amazon for under $100 I should add that I am aware of some canbus flipper apps that have been made or in development but in my opinion that's not really a flipper zero related issue this is stuff that can be and is done on laptops and dedicated tools that said the majority of car thefts if they're not just flat out total away are done using relay attacks amplifying the signal of a key for a push to start vehicle and relaying it back to trick the vehicle into thinking the key is actually presentent in range this just isn't something you're going to do with the flippers this isn't a new problem it's old and it's getting older security advances it always will so in short no you can't really steal a car with the flipper zero at least not in the way some Tik Tok videos may have led you to believe anyhow I really wanted to make this video because of all the fearmongering stemming from the Canadian government's proposal to ban The Flipper zero and tools like it I figured with my background I'd have a little bit more insight than the average person in regards to auto theft but that's all I got for you today thanks for watching

Channel: Nic M.

Views: 20,339

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Id: oFUZJO8qGW4

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2024