Every once in a while something comes along that every nerd out there covets. I’ve lost more than my fair share of time and money on my SirI’m homesick for a steam deckand i’m currently following replenish bots for every Raspberry Pi I can get my hands on for under $100 during the 2022 Grand Pi Shortage.
But few devices capture the imagination of your IT friend like the Flipper Zero: a hacking multi-tool shaped like a playful children’s toy and decorated with a friendly dolphin. Packed with sensors, chips and antennas, the Flipper lets you playfully play mischief with all kinds of devices, from security gates to card readers.
There are downsides to the mischief. The company that makes the gadget has faced payments of more than $1.3 million held up by PayPal and shipments of devices being held up by US Customs — all this gives the device a certain cachet among the hacker set.
What is it?
To the untrained eye, the Flipper Zero looks like a toy. It’s a small orange and white plastic device with a playful Tamagotchi-esque dolphin on its monochrome orange 1.4-inch display. Cute! But in reality, the Flipper Zero is a multi-tool that covers many of your hacking needs. Imagine a Leatherman or a Swiss Army Knife, but to talk to electronics, and you have a general idea of ​​what the Flipper Zero can do. To no one’s surprise, it is open source and was successfully funded on Kickstarter at a cost of approximately $4.6 million.
What really sets it apart from other tools, aside from the stylish Y2K design, is its flexibility. While some tools, like the Chameleon Mini, have a limited number of tools at their disposal, the Flipper has several. It can communicate with sub-1GHz devices such as old garage doors, both low and high frequency RFID, NFC cards, infrared devices and even Bluetooth. You may have seen viral videos of people using the flipper to annoy Tesla owners a bit by opening their charging ports remotely — but the flipper’s real strength is its versatility. Just about every wireless device is vulnerable to it in one way or another.
What can it do?
It is best to answer this question one antenna at a time. The sub-1GHz transceiver allows it to communicate with legacy devices such as garage doors, restaurant pagersgates, gas station price signs and doorbells. The 125 kHz antenna allows you to read, clone and emulate older ones prox cards. Combined with the NFC module, it can read, write and emulate both low- and high-frequency NFC devices such as tap cards. And with the infrared transceiver, he can get to know any IR device right away. Have you lost the remote control to your air conditioning or soundbar during a move? Not only can the Flipper learn how to do that, but it’s likely that someone else came up with the code already. Want to take out your robot dog for comic effect?? Being driven crazy.
Plus, you can run with the Flipper Bad USB attacks by connecting the device to a computer via USB and running a whole series of Ducky scripts, one more annoying than the other. If you’re already familiar with the USB Rubber Ducky, some of it may look familiar to you. For something less evil you can use it to save U2F keys to do two-factor authentication. And you’re not limited to using the small screen. You can also connect your phone to the flipper via Bluetooth and control it with this very useful app. There is also a microSD card slot for storing data.
It is important that the Flipper has no wifi outside the gate. However, the device has quick access to the GPIO pins, so you can WiFi development board or ESP8266 for various fun projects like pen testing, dead, probesand more.
Aside from the basic capabilities of the device, The Flipper has a robust and vibrant community that supports it. There are tons of sources online, and people are finding fun new ways to use the device always. Obviously it can run a weird version of DOOM. And Tetris! And Flappy Bird! You can use it to emulate Skylanders and amiibos! If you somehow come across a working phone booth, you can do it the old fashioned way phone phreaking! And because the project is open source, there’s nothing stopping you from installing your own firmware (and a lot of people do).
How much threat is it?
This is where we enter the area where shipments are held up by customs.
The Flipper Zero is a very powerful tool, and in the wrong hands it could be used very maliciously, but you could say the same about a Raspberry Pi that you turned into a Pwnagotchivarious ESP 8266 cards, or even just your phone.
As always, it is important to note that a tool is often only as useful or dangerous as the person using it. The tools to create chaos are there, but it takes planning and the decision to do it. An individual has to choose whether to copy keycards, mess with gas station price signsor force someone’s computer to subscribe to your YouTube channel. And with most hacking tools, the greatest benefit is usually testing your own security, not attacking others.
At the same time, some people just want to mess with wireless signals. I know more than one person who would have loved to buy a Flipper Zero but mainly use it to do things like turn on their air conditioner. By itself, the Flipper Zero won’t turn a legion of IT guys into Watch Dogs protagonists, and a significant portion of people will simply use it to clone their apartment key and harass other slightly more ignorant Tesla owners. fall.
Could I use it myself?
Absolute. The app is very simple, the interface is easy to use and people are adding robust scripts to it every day that you can find if you know how to search on GitHub. There is also a healthy forum (shocking in this day and age!) robust and friendly Discord server that you can join if you need help with a project.
That is, of course, if you can get one. Or a Raspberry Pi. Anyway, good luck in the future.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.