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Comment by yellow_lead | Hacker News Reader

It's probably a flipper zero. There is a Bluetooth iOS spamming script which can cause the devices to freeze or crash.

It's also possible via something way cheaper, like an ESP32 (~US$1.5), e.g. using https://github.com/ckcr4lyf/EvilAppleJuice-ESP32 (Disclaimer: I am the author)

Makes sense because the flipper zero basically is an esp32 with a display and a few other radios.

I wonder if it could also be done with a simple android app.

Wow, what a funky little device! Thanks for the lead, I might have to pick up one of these things. It looks good for hacking but is it hackable itself? An exposed JTAG port would have this thing shipping to my home right now.

The firmware is open source, and third party software already exists

Ex: https://github.com/Flipper-XFW/Xtreme-Firmware

Picked one up for Christmas and have already been having a blast with it today. Yes, it is supremely hackable, try awesome-flipperzero [1] as a starting point. The iOS exploit discussed here is already patched as of a week or two ago, fwiw.

[1] https://github.com/djsime1/awesome-flipperzero

Ok this is the silliest nitpick but like... The personality/emotionality of the flipper zero has been the biggest thing stopping me from using mine more.

Like, I classify myself as an empath, and it's physically painful to think about using it and having to face the dolphin's sad face if it's been a while.

Looks like I need to hack mine to not get sad when I don't use it. Digital antidepressants, as it were...

You could use a custom firmware that allows asset packs, and just remove/replace either the sad animations or just all of them.

Obviously the best option is to just use it regularly enough that the dolphin doesn't get sad!

I've heard of these, but don't own one. Is the dolphin the equivalent of the Duolingo bird, or were you making a joke? (Sorry to ruin the joke if you were making one, I was just curious!)

Closer to a Tomagotchi. It's just some cute little pixel animations. It "levels up" as you use it, and has a mood based on frequency of usage, and randomly rotates between different activities. It doesn't affect anything the device actually does, it's just for fun.

> It looks good for hacking but is it hackable itself?

Yes. The firmware is open-source and can be reflashed over USB, and SWD is exposed on the socket on the top of the device.

fully hackable. they give you for shell access over USB, and it has exposed io ports for custom accessories. they encourage you to play around with the firmware and expand its capabilities how're you want, it is part of the product design and intention

it exposes an Arm serial wire debug port, which is and isn't a JTAG port. Specifically, it's a different layer 1 interface, using a 2-wire serial port instead, but it uses the JTAG protocol on top.

I'm familiar with SWD from a UX standpoint- I write firmware, so I use it a lot. "Just cram the wires into the J-Link a little differently" is about as much research I've ever had to do to use SWD. I never really dug into the technical differences. Thanks for the explanation!

There's a whole community making stuff for it. You can even get external antennas attached to the GPIO pins that multiply the range to something ridiculous.

TBH mine is mostly a clone of my NFC/RFID keys and I've got every Amiibo on ever made downloaded on it :D

ha when i was in school we used 'punters' to kick people off AOL

s/CON/CON

This looked to me like a useless sed substitution.

But, apparently, typing "{S /con/con" in an AOL chat blue-screened Windows participants that had their AOL sounds turned on.

http://mazur-archives.s3.amazonaws.com/aol-files/breaches/co... [AOL-Files.com] (2000)

I remember turning off hallway TVs in school with a visor handspring and an IR app.

I had an android tablet with an IR blaster in it (the Sony tablet s) and had endless fun putting Macs with the remote receiver to sleep. Hold down the play button like on an iPod and people’s laptops would just go to sleep while they were using them.

At one point you could just send a ton of <<<<<<< which caused some internal parser to slow down horribly and eventually crash

Supposedly the most recent updates stop that.

Link to the script? I have a F0 and would like to try it

It’s probably this one: https://www.zdnet.com/article/flipper-zero-can-lock-up-an-ip...

This attack was mitigated in 17.2: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24003406/apple-iphone-fl...

https://github.com/Flipper-XFW/Xtreme-Firmware/blob/1a9c9cc3...

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