across the US, Countless buildings, from government offices to the door to your next hotel room, are protected by RFID-controlled locks. On a recent trip to my office, I passed close to 20 of these keyless entry systems, which are among the most widespread in the world. But a fun, palm-sized device with a Tamagotchi-like interface can probably defeat the locks on many of these doors.
The $200 device is called the Flipper Zero, and it’s a portable pen-testing tool designed for hackers of all levels of technical expertise. The tool is smaller than a phone, can be easily concealed, and is equipped with a variety of radios and sensors that allow it to intercept and reproduce signals from keyless entry systems, Internet of Things sensors, garage doors, NFC cards. and virtually any other device. that communicates wirelessly over short distances. For example, in just a few seconds, I used the Flipper Zero to seamlessly clone the signal from an office RFID card safely tucked inside my wallet.
If you’d only heard of Flipper Zero through TikTok, where the tool has gone viral, you might think it was a toy that could make ATMs spit out money, cars unlock, and gasoline spill from pumps. free form. I spent the last week testing one to determine if the world was as vulnerable to Flipper Zero as social media was. What I found was mixed: Many of the most dramatic videos posted to TikTok are probably staged (most modern wireless devices aren’t susceptible to simple playback attacks), but the Flipper Zero is still undeniably powerful, giving viewers Aspiring hackers and experienced penetration testers a convenient new tool for testing the security of the world’s most ubiquitous wireless devices.
In reviews, people compare Flipper Zero to a Swiss army knife for physical penetration testing. But in my week of testing the Flipper Zero, it felt more like a black light, something you could literally hold up to a device that would reveal information, invisible to the human eye, about how it worked, what data it was emitting, and how often. i was doing it
Here’s a short list of a few things I learned with the help of Flipper Zero this week: Some animal microchips will tell you your pet’s body temperature. The tire pressure sensor in my neighbor’s car leaks data to anyone within signal range. My iPhone hits my face with infrared signals every few seconds. My home security system has built-in signal interference detection. WIRED’s office bathroom has a soap dispenser that broadcasts if you need a refill.
When I told Alex Kulagin, one of Flipper Zero’s co-creators, about my experiences using his tool to make these kinds of mundane observations, he explained that this is exactly what the device is designed to do. “We want to help you understand something deeply, explore how it works, and explore the wireless world around you that’s hard to understand,” he says.
Kulagin and his business partner, Pavel Zhovner, first came up with the idea for Flipper Zero in 2019. Since then, their company has sold 150,000 devices and their team has grown to nearly 50 people. But as they got older, they encountered some resistance. This summer, PayPal withheld payments of more than $1.3 million, and in September, US Customs and Border Patrol seized a shipment of devices. According to Kulagin, CBP released the shipment after a month, but has not yet told the company why it was holding the shipment. CBP declined WIRED’s request to comment on the seized Flipper Zeros.
Source: news.google.com