rmuk

"Invisible bat people", I thought.

Oh, boy, story time!

One of the first manufacturers to include asymmetric encryption as a standard component of their engine immobiliser across all their cars, at least in the UK, was Fiat in the 1990s. But they faced a quandary: once they keys were encoded with the appropriate codes, what should Fiat do with the codes? If they kept a copy it would be an expensive project and charging customers to access them every time they wanted a new key cutting would be terrible PR. They could gimp the security so you could just clone a key, but then it would be very easy to sidestep the encryption.

The solution they came with was pretty clever: in addition to the standard pair of blue keys the car came with, there was also The Big Red Key. The Big Red Key contained a code that could be used to program other keys or to change any of the parts of the engine that were part of the ECU without having to involve Fiat at all if that's what you wanted. The customer was given an advanced security system without being beholden to the manufacturer. The Big Red Key was comically oversized, and it came with a sticker, fob and in a bag all with clear warnings to the effect: "Do not use this key. If you lose it your car is ten kinds of fucked. Do not use this key. Keep it secret, keep it safe."

So what happened? People happened. A small mibority of people saw The Big Red Key and insisted on using it as their day-to-day key, but it wasn't as hard wearing as the blue keys (hard plastic instead of silicone) so it would crush or crack and, of course, people would lose them. Then when they needed a new key or needed work doing on some easily-stealable components that the ECU would validate they didn't have their The Big Red Key, so they'd need the ECU security module wiping or replacing - which was expensive, over £1000 if I remember right.

Naturally the shitty tabloids got hold of it and every week The Daily Mail and The Sun were full of stories of Innocent British Motorist™ Conned™ By Foreigners™. "If Mandy Pleb had known how evil Fiat were she'd have bought a Rover," they'd moan, and Fiat had a real PR disaster on their hands, despite bringing a quality security technology to market, including it as standard and resisting the temptation to profiteer off it.

So they gimped the security. Future Fiats didn't have a The Big Red Key. You got your blue keys which were dumbed down and, at least for a time, went back to inferior symmetric encryption to the detriment of the overwhelming majority, but at least a handful a prats were saved from themselves and the power of tabloids to change the world for the worse went unchallenged.

In short, fuck tabloids.

Who the fuck looks at the car market and thinks, "man, these people need yet another fucking SUV."

There's gales forecast this weekend. I wasn't worried before.

Nokia is a proponent of OpenRAN and associated technologies, which are open, vendor-agnostic standards for phone networks backend kit as opposed to the very, very proprietary systems of yore; I'd say on the basis that it should be easier to tell if an OpenRAN box is leaky. Obviously that requires vigilance on the part of the operator so, yeah, fuck knows, but it's harder for OpenRAN kit to lie.

As an aside, most countries have Lawful Intercept laws. Part of these laws require that the network kit has a standard physical port that gives full, unrestricted and - scarily - unlogged access to everything they handle for use by your government's intelligence agencies.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, but Nokia was a general tech company doing this sort of thing long before their handset business took off. They were known for phones the same way IBM was for laptops but that was almost a distraction from their core business.

HMD, the company that now makes Nokia-branded phones, is Finnish. Not only that, HMD is literally the same division that Nokia sold off to Microsoft, then MS spun off as a separate company and still has a lot of the same senior staff. The people making Nokia phones in 2024 are the same people who made them in 2004.

It's sad such promising technology is misused like this.

The slogan of the last fifty years and the next fifty years.

Honestly aside from #6 and the bedbugs bit (pun intended), you're describing every city I've ever been to.

So should the people who believe in Him.

Same here. The guy I ordered from is suffering a massive backorder problem, though. Can't wait to get my boards delivered, though.

I know what that link is without clicking. Here we go!

🎵Baaap 🎵Baaap-Baaap 🎵Baaap... 🎵Baaap. Thonk.

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