Flipper Zero can spam nearby iPhones with Bluetooth pop-ups

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/05/flipper-zero-hacking-iphone-flood-popups/

by manikandaraj • 3 years ago

46 44 3 years ago

xeromal2• 3 years ago

I love my little Flipper Zero. Comes in handy for all kinds of things. Recently copied my hotel keycard with it just in case I lost it.

nickthegreek3• 3 years ago

Did the same at cedar point this weekend. The flipper zero is just a fun little gadget.

grubbs• 3 years ago

Yea I'd like to grab one literally to copy my garage keycard at work. I always forget and have to pay ridiculous rates in the city...

lxgr4• 3 years ago

That's really neat, but on another level it's a shame that this is possible with so many keycards still.

At least for magnetic stripe keycards, you'd need actual physical access to the card for a second; with many contactless ones, a tap on somebody's wallet/pocket is enough.

Actually secure keycards only cost fractionally more; even classic Mifare (which has been thoroughly hacked) would offer better security than this.

hnav2• 3 years ago

most keycards/fobs are pretty secure and near impossible to copy (e.g. NXP Desfire based systems), others are easy to copy but copies can be detected (e.g. NXP Mifare Classic), it's mostly legacy RFID stuff that's trivial.

xeromal2• 3 years ago

It wasn't a very easy process. I had to scan my card for about 30 minutes and then I had to scan the card reader for a bit. It was impractical.

IshKebab3• 3 years ago

Ok but... please don't.

You can be an arsehole with a megaphone too if you want, but please don't be an arsehole.

paxys• 3 years ago

It would be great if we lived in a world where "please don't" was an effective security strategy, but we do not, and Apple needs to fix this problem before it goes viral.

utunga• 3 years ago

I dunno.. if we just assume everyone around us is gonna be an asshole then we can never have nice things. In order to be able to take the subway I'm willing to assume that not every person in the car is gonna blast their personal music preference at max volume. Yes it is possible for them to do that but that doesn't mean it's on me to invent super smart headphones to block that out. At some point, in some cases, "please don't" is in fact a valid security response.

failuser2• 3 years ago

Wireless communications are inherently jammable. Where is the border between this and a bunch of microwaves jamming cell reception? I’m not saying Apple should not have done a better job in anti-spam measures, but “please don’t” is a basis for many nice things we have.

IshKebab3• 3 years ago

This isn't a security issue though. It's just annoying. It also requires physical proximity.

We do live in a world where expecting people around you to not be arseholes is a reasonable strategy.

The only real difference here between this and people playing loud shitty music on their phones or whatever is that it's harder to locate the source.

vorpalhex2• 3 years ago

I'm browsing this article on my "hacking device" (my laptop) while using my "hacking program" (a web browser with devtools) to enjoy the experience.

Later I might take my "child mauler" (dog) on a walk.

For a site with "tech" in the name, I expect significantly better than this nonsense. Flipper Zero is a nice packaging of dev tools but nothing fundamentally new. If it makes the author feel better, we can repeat the attacks with a simple esp32 and save a whole bunch of money - though we'd lose out on the cute animations.

floss_silicate• 3 years ago

...and shared on Hacker News.

nickthegreek3• 3 years ago

What in this article is nonsense? It did a decent job of explaining that it needs to be compiled from a 3rd party firmware, how the attack works and a video of said attack.

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

The article can be as nuanced as it wants but if the title calls the thing a "hacking device" that's a fair thing to criticize

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 3 years ago

I wasn't particularly appreciative of the phrasing in the opening sentence:

Thanks to a popular and relatively cheap hacking tool, hackers can spam your iPhone with annoying pop-ups

Because it seems to place blame (possibly unintentionally) on "a popular and relatively cheap hacking tool" rather than "an individual's choice to annoy the shit out of others".

slt2021• 3 years ago

perhaps Flipper is hacking device, same as Hacker News is for hackers in general sense, not for computer security hackers

vorpalhex2• 3 years ago

Flipper is not advertised as a "hacking" device.

I agree there are uses of the word hacker that don't mean to exploit, but the author here is not using the term in a positive sense. The author is clearly using it in the perjorative.

dang• 3 years ago

Ok, we've taken the "hacking device" out of the title above.

jxf• 3 years ago

It feels like it would also be helpful if advertisements were rate-limited (for example, if an advertisement is declined three times, don't show it again for another 24 hours).

rjh29• 3 years ago

Android has that feature.

codetrotter2• 3 years ago

So if someone spams me with Bluetooth advertisements, and I decline three times, and then I want to connect some other device that also uses Bluetooth advertisements, now I have to wait 24 hours before I can do so? Seems not ideal either.

Willamin• 3 years ago

A simple solution: On the dialog for the Nth advertisement, also provide a "disable AirDrop for 1 hour" choice. If the user wanted to receive these again, they can re-enable AirDrop from Settings or the Control Center.

lxgr4• 3 years ago

As far as I know, this dialog is only supposed to pop up for password requestors in your contact list, your own devices (which have an Apple ID based signing credential that can be verified offline) etc., so this seems like an easy to fix bug on Apple's side rather than a conceptual weakness.

hoc2• 3 years ago

Lazy implementation meets overpriced gadget resulting in TC's boredom filter getting sabotaged? Pretty thrilling story line.

wkat42422• 3 years ago

Yeah the flipper zero is very expensive for what it is. If not I'd have had one. Since it's open source I was hoping for Chinese clones like what happened with that similar device with the round clickwheel but it hasn't happened yet.

gear54rus2• 3 years ago

Why is it expensive tho? It seems to be this little bridge between digital and somewhat analogue world that you can use for many things. What price would you suggest? Or what alternative way is there to achieve things like this?

MisterTea• 3 years ago

Anthony said that he devised an attack that can work over “thousands of feet,” using an “amplified board” ... Anthony said he is not releasing details of that technique “due to major concerns,” such as giving others the ability to send spam pop-ups “across vast distances, potentially spanning miles.”

Anthony must be the only person knowledgeable of analog electronics design on planet earth then. Security through ignorance.

jacquesm• 3 years ago

Anthony actually has a sense of responsibility, which is commendable.

samstave• 3 years ago

The Lockheed's SAVI RFID tags were all historically 433mhz, and on every military shipping container...

There is no security for these tags, so if you can speak to them you can write to them... thus if you had a flipper, one could erase/fake payload on the tag...

The problem is that one doesnt know what the tag data corresponds to in the inventory systems - so the worst one may do is scramble all the tags such that a valid reader would never be able to determine what was in the containers... and one could use a flipper on a drone to fly over a supply bulk of containers and render finding supplies via RFID impossible - or one could copy and paste data from crates, thus making all reads wrong....

Flipper Zero can spam nearby iPhones with Bluetooth pop-ups

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