Got a van Moof bike? Worried that you might not be able to unlock it if the company goes bust completely (it relies on their servers to unlock the bike). Fear not, have an open source tool to unlock your bike https://github.com/grossartig/vanmoof-encryption-key-exporter
@quixoticgeek I hate a lot of teslas design choices in terms of UX. Still, they supply a physical keycard you can use to unlock and start the car even when the primary way to do this is your phone.
@quixoticgeek just tagging in a public TL reply, don't mind me...
#VanMoof #ebike users worried about the company going broke and being unable to unlock their fancy bike with the app might like the open source unlocker tool linked in the parent post https://social.v.st/@quixoticgeek/110706151558168132 right about now @bikes #BikeTooter
@quixoticgeek I hate that that's a sentence that sounds plausible and almost normal.
@quixoticgeek Thats something you should always have on your mind with such smart products, what happens if company behind it goes bankrupt. Thanks for the hint with the tool.
@bjoern I think this is an area where the EU should be taking action on orphan products, and key escrow.
The last thing you want to establish is key escrow. We fought damn hard to not have it.
@FlorianTischner @bjoern oh. That's useful to know. How would you handle this sort of problem ?
Mandate handling out the keys to the customer at time of purchase. Mandate open APIs. Mandate being able to set the server the bike communicates with to a URL of the customers choice.
Any of those three. Mandating key escrow would severely weaken encryption against the state, as it is an obvious target for both covert (secret services) and open (police) surveillance, and an obvious high value target for adversaries.
@FlorianTischner @bjoern that makes perfect sense. I stand very corrected. Thank you.
Glad to be of service. :)
If you want to dig deeper, the EFF maintains an archive: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Key_escrow/
@quixoticgeek In addition to saving your keys I'd also recommend to set an unlock code on the bike so you can unlock it without any app.
@quixoticgeek Wait, those bikes don't have any conventional key at all? That's a glaring design issue!
Also, that domain name https://vanoof.grossartig.io/ lol.