5 ms·

I'm skeptical of the effectiveness. The article states that the reason for this intervention is a set of organized shoplifting rings that operate as shadow bus

I'm skeptical of the effectiveness. The article states that the reason for this intervention is a set of organized shoplifting rings that operate as shadow businesses. I have a hard time believing that an organized operation won't eventually figure out how to enable stolen gear. Maybe via technological means by figuring out how the bluetooth "enable" protocol works or waiting for a vuln in the tool's bt stack, but much more likely by just bribing a cashier or manager. Keeping valuable merchandise behind lock and key -- or behind the counter -- seems like a more effective solution.

deleted 5y ago
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Workaccount2 5y ago
Honestly if they do enough volume to spin custom silicon, which gets cheaper and more accessible every year, it would become impractical to bypass the security. You essentially would get an electric motor and would need to rig up your own controller. And likely also figure out how to get the DRM battery to work with it.
- shawnz 5y ago
  It's a power tool, why does it need any silicon at all? Obviously the primary current path of battery -> trigger -> motor isn't going to be able to be routed through any integrated circuits. So I have a hard time imagining that this won't be trivially bypassable.
  - bradstewart 5y ago
    Pretty much all motor controllers these days are silicon based.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    They can always steal the equipment that unlocks it all. There have to be thousands of those pieces of equipment at every Home Depot out there. One of them disappears but isn't reported as stolen and now you've got your master key to unlock anything you want.
  - jakemauer 5y ago
    Brushless tools, which are increasingly common, absolutely require silicon to manage the pulses of electricity to the winding groups.
  - Workaccount2 5y ago
    The motor is driven by a controller which modulates external switching transistors as a function of trigger percentage and the direction switch. It likely also does stuff like battery monitoring and thermal foldback.

deleted 5y ago

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Workaccount2 5y ago

Honestly if they do enough volume to spin custom silicon, which gets cheaper and more accessible every year, it would become impractical to bypass the security. You essentially would get an electric motor and would need to rig up your own controller. And likely also figure out how to get the DRM battery to work with it.

shawnz 5y ago
It's a power tool, why does it need any silicon at all? Obviously the primary current path of battery -> trigger -> motor isn't going to be able to be routed through any integrated circuits. So I have a hard time imagining that this won't be trivially bypassable.
- bradstewart 5y ago
  Pretty much all motor controllers these days are silicon based.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  They can always steal the equipment that unlocks it all. There have to be thousands of those pieces of equipment at every Home Depot out there. One of them disappears but isn't reported as stolen and now you've got your master key to unlock anything you want.
- jakemauer 5y ago
  Brushless tools, which are increasingly common, absolutely require silicon to manage the pulses of electricity to the winding groups.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  The motor is driven by a controller which modulates external switching transistors as a function of trigger percentage and the direction switch. It likely also does stuff like battery monitoring and thermal foldback.