Flipper Zero: Multi-Tool Device for Geeks | Hacker News Reader

Flipper Zero: Multi-Tool Device for Geeks

flipperzero.one

685 pointsthatxliner320 comments

I got one not too long after the official launch and I've used it a decent amount (granted I am in cybersecurity and have a more real-world use cases then the average person). My favorite use case is the IR remote since phones no longer have IR blasters. It's saved me twice so far in having to buy/find a remote for something.

One thing people don't realize is that the custom firmware [0] that you can run allows you to receive and transmit on a wide range of frequencies under 1Ghz. Lots of things use that range (garage doors, gates, fan remotes, etc.) and are not very secure. I think that this will be a time looked back on where it's possible to interact with those devices without having to buy a custom PCB transmitter or somewhat expensive and complex SDR.

[0] https://github.com/DarkFlippers/unleashed-firmware

> phones no longer have IR blasters

Plently of phones still do [0]. I've configured mine to operate all my devices at home.

[0] https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2023&chkInfra...

In other words, Chinese brands still have IR blasters. I don't know I would trust Chinese-brand of phones though.

Why not? Most phones are manufactured in China anyways, and Xiaomi, OnePlus, Honor, Oppo are major and very widely popular and used brands all over the world (outside of the US which is allergic to Chinese brands unless it's for cheap crap or to outsource manufacturing to).

Outside of the US is a problem when it comes to availability and usability. I’m not going to buy a phone that doesn’t play nicely with my carrier or receive regionally relevant support.

OnePlus is the only brand on that list that makes sense buying in the US.

(Personally I can see why the IR blaster was removed as a feature in US phones. I can’t think of a time I wanted or needed it. How often are y’all losing remotes? My current remote doesn’t even really use IR for anything since the streaming box is controlled by Bluetooth and connected devices including the sound system are controlled by HDMI-CEC. My phone already controls the entire setup via a remote app that utilizes WiFi/Bluetooth).

I don’t have a television, and I haven’t owned anything with an IR port since the 2012 MacBook. I have zero use cases for IR blasters.

I've always liked Xiaomi. At home, we have several of their phones, a vacuum cleaner, and some shoes (yes, shoes!). But a few months ago, my Chrome homepage changed to a Chinese search engine, and after looking online, it seems it was a Xiaomi error that affected quite a few people. Also, they include ads in their customization layer. This will be the last Xiaomi device I purchase.

In terms of functionality they're night and day compared to Western brands which seem to just enshittify their devices while raising prices. They're all made in China at the end of the day.

You just need a small Bluetooth-enabled box sitting on your coffee table near the TV that has an IR transmitter and a paired app on your phone that can send commands to the box.

Edit: I had only search and one did appear: https://www.amazon.com/PUCK-Smart-Universal-Remote-Model/dp/...

Universal remotes are still a thing, and much cheaper than that or a Flipper Zero.

yeah, but you have to be line of sight for a universal remote to work. the app enabled IR box means you can be anywhere within range. that does have its advantages. also, being in the kitchen while the remote is near the couch when your streaming platform of choice asks "Are You Still There?" means you can answer from the kitchen.

Seems much cheaper than "infrared blasters" used for home automation

>> or somewhat expensive and complex SDR

I don’t think that’s as accurate today as it used to be.

On the hardware side there are tons of options very cheaply available - iirc the flipper uses the c1100 (or a number like that) it’s a popular cheap chip and it’s well documented and interfaces easily with arduino.

More accessibly, lime mini SDRs are cheap but there’s quite a few alternatives too.

On the software side GNU Radio is free with decent tutorials - we’re not talking anything like blender levels of difficulty to adopt even if it is a complex domain.

Although on the more accessible side, urh is incredibly powerful given how easy to use it is https://github.com/jopohl/urh

I used the latter to tap into a 2 channel wireless bbq thermometer via a $10 rtl sdr and that was a breeze, an absolute walk in the park compared to when I reverse engineered the flysky telemetry system.

GNU radio is free, but what about the hardware you need if you want to transmit an actual signal?

An HackRF clone is quite a bit cheaper than a Flipper, and it's a full-blown SDR with TX capability

It's not the TX hardware part that will be expensive - but rather bespoke encoding and crypto. Not prohibitively expensive, just annoyingly expensive in money and/or time - enough to prevent anyone except criminals from tampering with those devices.

Or worse, vendors will use it as an excuse to make their products cloud-dependent, with strong cryptographic auth and actual processing done on the other side of the world.

(And with that enabling the rent seekers their recurring revenue, we arrive at the reality foretold by IIRC Philip K. Dick, where you have to subscribe to your own apartment doors.)

(EDIT: the more IoT embraces actual security, the more I feel that US gov had a point in classifying cryptography as munition. Perhaps there ought to be legal limits on using crypto against other people.)

As someone with a HackRF PortaPack knockoff I got from ebay, I would agree that SDRs are better and cheaper than ever before. However, I think the average person will struggle with using a HackRF for more complex projects. I've used URH before, and while useful, it can be intimidating for beginners.

Also, while I like the RTL-SDR (and the price tag!), you can't transmit with it. While this isn't a deal breaker to everyone, if you'd like to clone a garage door remote, for example, you need to be able to transmit. While you could use something like a raspberry pi and rpix [0], but I think it is more work than it's worth for many. Also, multiple RTL-SDRs are required for higher bandwidth applications like ASTC TV or trunked radios.

With the flipper, I think the main draw for most is the point-click-done nature. Include the Android/iOS app and it makes it easy to configure on the go without a computer. The expandability is one of the main feature that will increase adoption over time compared to the HackRF+PortaPack which, from what I saw in the past, lacked longer-term support and regular updates and new features.

[0] https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx

The batteries died in my bedroom TV remote a few nights ago, it wasn't until I went to replace them did I notice that one of the batteries had leaked and seems to have caused some corrosion on the contact, so until I clean it up I've switched to my Flipper Zero as the remote for it (just need power and audio control, rest is via a Roku stick). Never thought this would be my use case for it, but it worked out perfectly.

> one of the batteries had leaked and seems to have caused some corrosion on the contact

A reason why I have switched to NiMH rechargables. They leak less often. I've also grown tired of recycling spent alkaline batteries. Also Energizer has no leak guarantee on some of their batteries. I've got the green ones, Recharge Universal.

https://www.energizer.com/about-batteries/no-leaks-guarantee

A friend got this for me, but I'm struggling to put it into any useful purpose, any pointers with things I can experiment it.

Using it as a remote seems so cool, esp bc I lost my roku remote not so long ago so if you have any resources that could help I'd appreciate it.

The documentation I've seen so far seems far and scattered and it seems people are more scared of being implicit in illegal activities based on their resources.

Great tool for learning Bluetooth Pen-testing. I run BTCTF-Infinity on an ESP32, powered through the flippers GPIO. It creates the BTCTF environment and I use the flipper to crack the examples. Kinda like a self-contained gaming handheld for BT practice.

You can buy a Roku remote for like $5.

For IR remotes, there are a few ways to go about it. If you have a remote you want to clone, you can just use the flipper to clone and map buttons to a custom remote. If you don't have the remote and have a common device (like TVs), I would check this repo on Github [0] and see if you can find a compatible IR file. Note, you need a micro SD card in order to move the files onto the flipper, but a small one works fine.

I've had good luck with the basic universal remote when I'm in a pinch. Also, you can create custom IR files, but it can be a pain with encoding. The flipper forums are a good resource too [1].

[0] https://github.com/Lucaslhm/Flipper-IRDB

[1] https://forum.flipper.net/

sweet. thank you

Seems like there is at least a bit of interest [1] to convert lirc definitions [2], which is great, because there are so many of them. There even is a definition for my about 30 years old hifi! A really nice hack I saw is to send the code via something that reads lirc and capture it with a flipper in learning mode [3].

[1] https://forum.flipper.net/t/is-possible-to-convert-irplus-fi...

[2] https://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/

[3] https://github.com/Lucaslhm/Flipper-IRDB/pull/294

Not answering your question, but the Roku app includes a better version of the remote.

> Lots of things use that range (garage doors, gates, fan remotes, etc.) and are not very secure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_code I didn't know this wasn't secure enough. I thought this was the basis of most modern vehicle keyless entry too?

It is hard for me to not think of the Flipper Zero as a script-kiddie tool to do super illegal things like open your neighbor's garage illegally.

While rolling codes can be secure (KeeLoq [0] is a more secure example but has it's own issues), this [1] is an example of some of the weaknesses that can happen if a rolling code algorithm is broken. I have personally been able to capture, decode, encode, and transmit garage door codes using that python script and a HackRF (which can also be done with a flipper and custom firmware).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KeeLoq

[1] https://github.com/argilo/secplus

Can you help me understand why rolling code attacks aren't broken on most cars but are broken for garages?

Also, are attacks like this real/common/easy to pull off? https://youtu.be/1SUGf6OwRzw Where the signal is amplified from the key inside the house to the car. How does the car/keyfob not detect it's signal/noise ratio or time for roundtrip is all messed up distance wise?

From what I understand, cars are a bit more complex now then garages. KeeLoq, from my understanding, is not 'breakable' like garage doors. It does have weaknesses, but more related to the raw cryptography/math. Since KeeLoq is a cryptographic function, it can be broken by brute force or by gaining access to the manufacture key.

For the amplification attacks, my understanding of them is that the key fob and car may be able to detect this kind of attack, but require more logic/software to do so. Also, most of these attacks use high frequency 'backhaul' wireless networks (key fob at 3-400Mhz, backhaul at 2.4-5 Ghz Wifi with lower latency) to prevent such timing/signal-noise from being detected. If I had to guess, most key fobs/cars are more focused on making sure the key fob works at range or in hard-to-detect environments and not focused on preventing such relay/amplification attacks.

Also, some similar attacks to what you linked could also be done against Bluetooth (I think Tesla had this issue in the past few years) with a simple Bluetooth range extender/relay setup.

(Note: without one of those devices, most of this is just guesses/what I've seen is possible/theoretical in terms of attacks)

My son was just arrested for using this in his hacking club at high school. Be careful if you have kids with one. According to witnesses in the room, he was showing it to kids in his hacking club and they all thought it was just turning off Apple phones in the classrooom. Apparently, it turned off phones including several teachers in adjoining classrooms. Anyways. The police came to the school and arrested him and are threatening him/us with federal crimes. They also executed a search warrant in our house and took all electronics. Its been a little traumatising to say the least.

I find really excessive having the police involved in those things, specially when are child doing dumb things that hurts nobody.

I done a worse "hacking" actions when I was 12 and I were grounded without any access to any electronic device outside TV at lunch/dinner

They didnt know who was causing it or why. Blocking a persons ability to contact emergency services, by DoSing their phone can be devastating.

Right, but did anyones attempts to contact emergency services get affected in this case?

I'm guessing not.

No matter how you paint it, this was probably rather excessive on the part of the police.

And on the part of who called the police in the first place. In my experience teachers and school management are just too paranoid/neurotic and will escalate everything so they can't be blamed.

It might be legal for them to call the cops, but it still does not absolve them from moral responsibility for their actions. Including all the distress it would cause the child's family, and the likely ongoing PTSD from the incident.

>Blocking a persons ability to contact emergency services

Looks like they still can call the “emergency” given the police was there after.

40+ years ago I did some dumb things in school as well. But in all cases I got punished by my father. Not because I hurt somebody, but because I wasted a lot of people's time who had to deal with consequences from my actions. I didn't respect other people and their time and it was enough for my father to punish me. And he had every right to do so.

When I was a teacher some time ago some kids did a dumb things as well – they "hacked" schools' computers by putting some really sticky putty under keyboard keys. I wasn't allowed to punish these kids by ordering to clean it after themselves and parents agreed to pay for a new keyboards after weeks of "discussions" with lawyers involved.

Sorry to hear about this. You probably shouldn’t post anymore about this for legal reasons.

For other readers, I’d be curious the jurisdiction.

The specific app that can turn off iPhones requires the “unleashed” firmware I believe.

Also, regarding legality, if you are DoSing cell phones, you are creating a hazard where users are no longer able to contact emergency services, and this is the most likely avenue of charges, as opposed to FCC fines (if in USA) for using locked spectrums.

And so do reinforced concrete walls, they block the signal and thus prevent emergency services from being contacted too. And so many other things. Radio communications are unreliable by default. Someone's prank should not result in criminal charges unless tangible harm has occurred.

Intent, not the act is 99 percent etc etc. Wether or not harm took place does not matter, if it did, the entire basis of our legal system would rely upon only direct evidence of violent acts.

This is why attempted murder, kidnapping, etc is a charge. We do not yet have a charge of "attempted mass personal device disablement". and there is no reasonable case for......"manslaughter" of a device.

Being "realistic"/less analagous; Your mobile device is the most important inanimate object to you in every single category imaginable. And this is the case for most of humanity for some time now. If someone knowingly removed my access to my personal device maliciously, I would suddenly start caring very much about seeing that persons freedoms taken away.

Edit: after rambling I wanna reiterate my first bit....intent is 99 percent. In this case, it's a kid. The law has context, and I think they should of course be lenient.

Yes, and if the intent was to prevent access to emergency services, then yes that would rightfully be a crime. But if the intent was to pull a stupid prank that would temporarily disable someone's iPhone for 5 minutes, then that should not be a crime, if only done once.

The kid should be told not to do it again. And no law enforcement should have ever been involved in the first place. Otherwise we are teaching those children to distrust authorities, that authorities are unjust and unfair. Thus undermining the rule of law.

All their classmates are also involved and watching the outcome of the situation. Some might end up seeing the "system" as being unfair and are not going to think twice before stealing or committing some other crime, e.g. fraud.

There teachers are crazy and so is the police being this overdramatic while the actual crooks are out there free doing their crimes while they busy arresting kids, crazy!

Assuming teachers were in class teaching when this occurred.

What do teachers use their phones for during class that they would have noticed this?

Genuinely intrigued as you never caught a teacher on their mobile phone in class when I was in school.

So, in San Fran, people break into cars and steal from stores, and they are not even arrested, but kids who are into electronics are being charged as the biggest criminals. It reminds me of the girl [0] who was into Chemistry and was charged with terrorism.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBhMTXnw6xU

It's no surprise the cops like dealing with the people who won't even bother to fight back.

Because the f**ing human species is a predator, and we go after weakness.

As someone with two and a half -- yes, and a half -- felonies for computer trespass from when I was in highschool, at 17, freshly 17, in 2003...I feel for you. Longer story, obviously. But no one knew how to deal with the situation, so "Something has to be done!"

In the words of Governor William J La Petomane, one of Mel Brooks' characters from Blazing Saddles, "We have to keep our phony baloney jobs gentlemen!"

When I was a teenager I would pour Coca-Cola into the school computers after seeing a fellow student get into trouble for similar stuff. Never got caught for that. It's acid and worked especially well against powered up electronic equipment.

I wouldn't be surprised nowadays they would just start a rumor about the teacher's sexual misconduct or grooming of the students, in response, instead. And the accusation could spread and escalate, completely destroying the life of the teacher.

A certain percentage of the population will just make stuff up if they have the opportunity to do so, and "juicy" gossip can spread virally. So if they ask for "witnesses" to come forward, they will. Sex offenders are hated so much in society, they get beaten and abused in prison all the time, so it's essentially torture in the end.

Those are the actions of a de-facto police state.

This is a super fun gizmo, it's discord channel is, uh, not great.

One cool thing is that you can talk to it serially. I pretty quickly had it organized with an IoT temperature sensor so that it could send commands to my ceiling fan given the temperature in my office.

I have also used it to capture the NFC code on a hotel card key so that I could still get into my room even after my key was inevitably "damaged" by nearness to other fields.

Some parts of it are silly, like the Tomagachi type game with the dolphin. Doesn't add value for me, but I can see how it might be something for someone.

There is also growing awareness with agencies about its flexibility, some apocryphal stories of them being confiscated by TSA checkpoints have come in.

Writing your own apps for them has a fairly high learning curve.

The dolphin annoyed me immediately, but it turns out that all of the graphic assets are simple to find in the firmware so it should be quite easy to change the look and feel of operation into something other than fun time with dolphin friend.

The Discord server is terrible. It’s both overrun with kids and yet also weirdly harshly moderated.

The device itself is fantastic though. Gives me some real Pebble vibes in all of the best ways. It’s very hackable and even though I don’t do crazy pentest things with it, it’s just an overall fun device.

The reddit is the same way. All the threads are new people asking how to use it to “have fun” by “hacking” vending machines and stuff, or for help convincing their parents to let them get one, or whether it’s worth their allowance to get.

I do have one, I think it’s a fun thing to have in my bag, but haven’t had any luck finding forums of responsible adults, or even just adults, discussing development or things to do with it. Even the “adults” who post about it inevitably do something like get fired because they take it to work and try to clone their own badges and the enter their work with the flipper.

Sorry for the rant.

Was going to say the exact same thing about /r/flipperzero. It feels more like a fan subreddit full of kids, which.... ain't my scene at all. People on that subreddit make it seem like it is this amazing thing that will get you in jail or something for posessing.

... But after owning one? I dunno. It's a neat gadget but to be honest about the only practical thing I've got out of it is cloning our apartment keyfobs and duplicating hotel cardkeys. Otherwise it's kinda fun opening up tesla charge doors and messing with iphones using Bluetooth LE. Somebody somewhere was starting a project to add CANbus support, which would be a perfect fit for the device.

I feel like the ecosystem needs a better way to add "apps" to the device. I might be missing something but it doesn't really have any official app registry or anything. Something like you'd see for npm, pypi, or platformio.

There's a ton of TikTok/Instagram nonsense showing it out in the world doing those things.

A large volume of the stuff you can do with it is just spoofing a USB keyboard and running console commands. You could do that for years with tons of existing microcontrollers the price of a hotdog, but suddenly script kiddies have taken notice and are willing to pay 100x for the ability.

The dolphin game is to allow them to avoid some import/export restrictions by classifying it as a toy, which it is, and not a hacking tool. It’s not a professional device.

Friend of mine has 3 yrs old. The "dolphin" is in constant use by the child. "What is he doing now?" " Let's check what dolphin is playing with today". "What does it say" "Does he miss me?" "Let's play with him".

It quickly became pal of the child.

Friend told that is one in top 5 toys of the child now :)

When people realized anyone with a sophisticated police scanner could listen in on cordless (and then early cellular) phone calls, it forced manufacturers to actually implement a bare-minimum level of security on those devices.

I hope this pushes more manufacturers to switch to rolling-code algorithms (like the key fob your car uses), in place of simpler, less secure codes that can be captured and replayed.

Sure though in some cases it isn't worth the cost or effort, e.g. kinetic light switches. In some cases it's appropriate to expect people to not be arseholes.

In the 1980s a friend of mine had a German radio which had a larger array of frequencies than that available in my country. It allowed us to listen to the police. Curious, but not interesting.

In the 90s my brother had a portable TV/Radio which we managed to tune into cellphone conversations.

Those were the days you could still telnet 25 to send emails with whatever sender you wanted. I used to send Christmas greetings from Santa to my colleagues at uni.

> When people realized anyone with a sophisticated police scanner could listen in on cordless (and then early cellular) phone calls, it forced manufacturers to actually implement a bare-minimum level of security on those devices.

Did it?

IIRC, the biggest thing to fall out of that is the US government banned scanners that could pick up the frequencies commonly used by cordless phones.

> IIRC, the biggest thing to fall out of that is the US government banned scanners that could pick up the frequencies commonly used by cordless phones.

I recall that. I think the age of SDR's made such a ban (law?) almost impossible to enforce.

When did the age of SDRs begin where these devices were still in vogue? What's the overlap?

Who said they overlapped?

OP stated the existence of SDRs now would render such a (new) ban (on scanners) wouldn't work.

Well, DECT wasn't exactly very secure, and neither was GSM (2G) call encryption. And check out the recent TETRA-related CVE's for more fun ;)

https://www.midnightblue.nl/tetraburst

In the late 1980's I had this VCR that would allow me to tune into over the air TV channels in the eastern US.

Being an elementary aged student poking around, I realized I could use the tuner to listen in to telephone calls somehow. Granted, I lived on a farm and there were probably only two dozen houses within a mile radius of our home; the nearest being a quarter mile away. I had a small rabbit ear antenna on the back of my CRT TV that could have been plugged into the VCR.

I don't recall the actual hardware I had.

I never figured out if I was listening to cordless phones (seems they would not be powerful enough to reach me), cell phone signals (there were few cell phones in my poor rural community I assume but I guess there could have been travelers on a nearby highway), or CB radio signals from truckers on the highway (these seemed like mundane person to person conversations; not trucker conversations). Perhaps it could have been long distance HAM operators though they didn't seem to use any HAM protocols while speaking.

Likely first-gen cell phone service (AMPS)[1]. Calls were entirely unencrypted analogue audio transmitted in bands formerly allocated to UHF television. Your VCR was likely a pre-83 model, which is when the frequencies were reallocated to AMPS[2].

[1]: https://www.telecomtrainer.com/amps-cellular/

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_television_freq...

Recent news discussions:

Flipper Zero can be used to crash iPhones running iOS 17

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37919396

Apple Shuts Down Flipper Zero's Ability to Shut Down iPhones

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38656607

Flipper Zero banned by Amazon for being a ‘card skimming device’

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35481580

UK airport confiscates passenger's Flipper Zero

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37707486

The last one is hilarious, just endless speculation on how the guy could have handled it better, the guy coming in with the account of how he handled thing pretty nicely, and then just crickets.

Good read indeed - a lot of conclusions being jumped to there.

Someone on Twitter mentioned how some kid managed to crash and shutdown their insulin pump using the flipper zero.

source? sounds fishy to me, can't believe insulin pumps are so vulnerable.

I don't have a source for OP's Flipper Zero story, but insulin pumps are surprisingly vulnerable: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-medical-advisories/icsm...

https://twitter.com/morganiteproto/status/173065586102911433... https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/17307842936416793...

But it's also from Twitter so take it with a grain of salt.

Specifically they say there's an Android device for monitoring/controlling the pump that was taken out by this. That seems more plausible given that it likely isn't exactly running the newest version of everything.

And the fix would be to remove yourself ~30ft from the source (though BLE might have even less range). The pump itself wasn't "disabled", the dude's Android phone (or dedicated Android device for this) was temporarily glitched while in range.

Medical devices with shit firmware are hardly uncommon. I can totally believe someone crashed one with a device like this.

Apart from access control systems, it hardly has any good uses in the real world as a pen-testing device. If it was a pocket carry, true SDR, capable of recording RF signals as I/Q, performing actions on them, replaying them, etc, it would have justified its cost. But, with a limited set of modulations supported by the used RF chips, it is more like a toy for hacker wanna-be teenagers than a serious tool.

An investment in something like HackRF+PortaPack clone is far better, IMHO.

Totally agree that this isn't a good full pentesting device, but I also think that such a device doesn't need to be in order to be popular. Just look at the IM-ME when Samy Kamkar showed it off [0] and it sold out.

Most people don't need a full SDR like a HackRF in order to explore their RF devices and a Flipper gives that too them without the headache of software and the bulk of a full PortaPack.

(I love my HackRF and PortaPack for the record. The Flipper can't complete with the features and low-level access when you need it)

[0] https://hackaday.com/2015/06/08/hacking-the-im-me-to-open-ga...

It's good as a bluetooth presentation remote, sharing QR codes or NFC contact info at conferences, and jiggling your mouse so your VPN connection doesn't die when your laptop locks up. It was handy around the house over the holidays too (https://some-natalie.dev/blog/flipper-at-home/).

It's a decent multitool. :-)

I have found it pretty useful in a few situations: - USB/Mouse keyboard when the iMac you are working on has totally dead batteries for the mouse/keyboard- its not fun but works in a pinch.

- Cloning weird ceiling fans/lights. Apparently I've bought horrible remotes but this helped.

- Used this as a nightstand clock while traveling.

- Used the authenticator app as a backup Yubi key

- Mouse jiggler to keep a computer awake

- blasting tvs at restaurants is a ton of fun and my kids like that.

- And the IR functionality for Nerf Laser Ops Pro (IR laser tag) is an absolute blast - the actual Nerf guns have a delayed trigger, but with Flipper there is no delay or need to "reload" so you are an unstoppable beast.

Just a heads up about the Flippers U2F implementation [0] and the possible weaknesses compared to a Yubikey/other U2F key.

[0] https://modusmundi.com/posts/u2f-flipper/

Thank you for this - It is really more of a backup/testing since I leave my Flipper at home 99% of the time and rely on my real Yubi for a few things. Mainly Github which was just because I can.

I had a lot of fun playing with the Flipper's Bad USB DuckyScript to automate some repetitive and tedious CMS workflow for a client, filling in a lot of input fields on multiple browser windows with a single press of a button. It improved my productivity and happiness. I've since graduated to Playwright, but it was the Flipper that sparked the idea.

> blasting tvs at restaurants is a ton of fun and my kids like that.

You can likely still buy those "every TV" $5 power/volume remotes that fit on a keychain, if they're asking for their own.

I tried using a Flipper with some NFC stickers so I wouldn't have to carry around so many FOBs and cards. It turns out that the Flipper does not excel at this task. It complained that the NFC stickers I bought were non-writable. And it couldn't read all the sectors on some NFC tags. However, I was able to use the Android MCT app to write to the same stickers and read the tags the flipper couldn't read. Cloning required copying strings to the clipboard, which is something the Flipper's UI is not really designed for.

Yeah, Flipper as a concept sounds cool but then I found out the current implementation is rather half-baked and comes with a lot of limitations. And the community is not that welcoming either.

> It complained that the NFC stickers I bought were non-writable.

I'm not an expert at NFC but after playing around with Flipper I've learned that there are different types of NFC devices and they aren't at all interchangeable. They aren't just dumb devices but actual computers that power up and do shit (I think).

I would love to get one but articles like this about the Russian connection put me off.

https://simovits.com/flipper-zero-zero-trust/

The device is nothing more than a quite powerful STM32 board with some interesting peripherals added and of course a very powerful firmware/software, which is what makes the difference. However, as everything is Open Source, it can be ported to a similarly designed, possibly different looking, device without the code that phones home, an it probably is what hackers should consider since the Flipper Zero has been banned in some places and being caught with it say in a airport could be enough for confiscation and/or interrogation. Also, it is overpriced for what it contains; they could sell it at half the price and still make a significant profit. And frankly, as someone who is 100% on Ukraine's side against the barbaric Putin invasion, I'd rather use my money to buy some electronics from Ukrainian surplus shops on Ebay.

Interesting. Do you have any sources that substantiate the claims made on this blog post?

I wasn't aware of a Russia connection until this post. On flipperzero.com near the top it says:

>Our team was originally formed in Neuron Hackspace by collaborating with industrial design and manufacturing experts Design Heroes.

A quick Google search for Neuron Hackspace and Design Heroes shows their location as Moscow. I'm inclined to believe the detailed report from that blog post and am glad I did not end up buying the device.

> I wasn't aware of a Russia connection until this post.

I'm still not aware of it after reading the post. Pointing out that some of the people on the project were members of a hackerspace in Moscow at some point in the past is not remotely sufficient to substantiate that there exists any current connection between the project and Putin's regime.

You refer to the post, but did you read the PDF linked to it? There's a conclusion section that's easy to digest.

As far as a connection to Putin's regime, you should read up the thread and note that nobody here mentioned that. Regardless of their supposed affiliations or lack thereof, I'm not interested in sending money to the Russian economy by purchasing a product from a Russian company. It's that simple. I think others would want to know that same information so thanks to pnw for mentioning it.

You mean like the CEO does work for FSB lives in Moscow supports the Russian war effort and built a service to silence Putin's opposition is not enough? We need to get him shaking hands with someone or cashing a check from FSB for services?

Stop trolling.

As it should, and US consumer protection is failing to act, this is from the report. People do not understand the level of control the Russian authorities maintain over businesses in Russia and citizens.

1. Flipper Devices Inc. is registered in USA as their main office, but no development or business is done at that address. The address belongs to a ”mailbox” company. 2. A majority of registered staff on LinkedIn were until recently registered in the Moscow region, (but suddenly moved to Tbilisi, Georgia according to their LinkedIn profiles.) - No developers remain in Russia according to LinkedIn.

3. TZOR and Neuron Hackspace shared the same address during the period of 2012-2013. (Neuron Hackspace used the address before TZOR was founded.) The Company of the founder of Neuron Hackspace, Esage Lab/TZOR, is placed on US sanction lists due to the DNC hack 2016, under the claim that the company provided tools to the Russian intelligence GRU and FSB. The attributions were validated both 2017 and 2020.

4. The Company and founder of Neuron Hackspace, Esage Lab/TZOR, had contracts with at least two companies that delivered services for the Russian government, FSB and the Russian military.

5. The founder and CEO of Flipper Devices Inc., has been involved in activities, such as running the DDOS site putinvzrivaetdoma.org, that could have attracted the attention of Russian security services.

6. The founder and CEO of Flipper DevicesInc., has been involved in activities since he moved to Moscow that can be interpreted as actively supporting the authorities in Russia, like trying to sabotage Alexei Navalny’s blog in 2014 and building a tool, Zaborona_help, to circumvent Ukrainian blocking of the Russian websites

The assessment is that there is an even chance that Flipper Zero has links to Russian Intelligence Services. The founder and financier of Neuron Hackspace was placed under US-sanctions due to providing tools to FSB and GRU related to the DNC-hack. The validity of the investigations behind the US-sanctions has been confirmed in 2017 (Intelligence community assessment) and 2020 (Senate Intelligence Committee). Pavel Zhovner’s past activities and that he seems to have been an early member of Neuron Hackspace contribute to this assessment.

It is at the same time likely that Russian authorities are well aware of the distribution of Flipper Zero and monitors the situation for opportunities to gain other types of benefits, either in form of influence over the hacking community, recruitment of talented hackers for similar projects or even attacks of infrastructure or other targets in the future.

It is also likely that Russian authorities will remain to have a substantial influence or control over this hacker community and could benefit from the future possibility to recruit talents with some form of combined security and IT background or even to blackmail foreigners that have been connected to this community.

So, they found nothing suspicious with devices or apps.

Also made some far fetched connections of Flipper Devices to companies owning the hackspace Pavel Zhovner worked in, and attributed his trolling and making anti-censorship tools "as actively supporting the authorities in Russia". lol.

Paranoia isn't the only factor in a purchasing decision. It seems quite clear to me it's a Russian company trying to hide that fact for obvious reasons. I appreciate pnw posting this and making me aware before I decided to send money (indirectly) to Russia.

And how are they "trying to hide" it?

> send money (indirectly) to Russia

Even the report mentions the team members moving to Tbilisi, Georgia. Afaik Pavel moved to Dubai and still has Ukrainian citizenship. So I doubt a significant portion of company's money ending up in Russia, maybe except salaries of a few engineers. But it's pennies compared to how much the regime is paid for the resources, if that's what you worry about.

Semantics aside, I think it's quite clear they are trying to mislead by giving the appearance of being an American company. What does their company address show on their website? Delaware.

The report mentioned that their LinkedIn profiles changed from showing Moscow to Tbilisi. I'm sure I could also change my location to Tbilisi on my LinkedIn profile. How is that a meaningful argument? I don't want any amount of my money going to the Russian economy if I can avoid it, even if it's merely pennies as you say.

Why do you care to defend them so much?

I'm not sure why you assume malice intentions by default.

Using a legal entity in a more convenient country for a startup seems like a common practice, including listing the address of such entity on the website. You'd be surprised how many companies are incorporated in America, pay taxes there, but have founders/employees/contractors elsewhere around the world.

So, I personally wouldn't count it as active effort of "trying to hide" or "trying to mislead".

> The report mentioned that their LinkedIn profiles changed from showing Moscow to Tbilisi. I'm sure I could also change my location to Tbilisi on my LinkedIn profile. How is that a meaningful argument?

Again, not sure why assume malice intentions. I also updated my Linkedin location when I left Russia, is that surprising?

> Why do you care to defend them so much?

Pavel pays me 15 rubles per comment of course! (tbh not sure why I waste time on this :D)

Thanks for your condescending explanation of corporate practices. I'm sure the typical HN reader is completely ignorant to those facts. Perhaps you could also explain Russian corporate practices and ethics to us all.

Only you are saying anything about malice. Everything is easily explained by greed (or the desire to simply gain if you prefer softer language).

I mean, I had zero idea about these things at some point, it wasn't condescending in any way. There's lots of different people on HN.

Anyway, seems like you made up your mind and there's zero point debating it with you.

Russian xenophobia has gotten out of control.

You should probably educate yourself little bit

$169 is a bit steep for me, so I went on Temu and bought a $8 125KHz RFID programmer & a $5 USB-C IR Blaster. Combined with my Samsung phones native NFC writing, bluetooth, etc I feel like it scratched the itch of 90% of what people do with Flipper for 10% the cost.

The M5Stack Cardputer seems like it would scratch the same itch as the Flipper Zero.

the whole point of the flipper is the sub-1ghz radio and nfc/rfid capabilities. It's not really intended to be used as a general purpose computer, it's more like a really extensible radio

Yeah, but for me (and I imagine a lot of people on here) the itch that Flipper Zero teases is that of a hackable computer in a neat form factor, not the specific radio capabilities that it's actually meant for.

I didn't know about M5 before and now I'm hooked exploring M5's store, so I appreciate OP's pointing me there!

I think there are a lot of better options if that's what you want. From what I've seen the appeal of the Flipper is that you can do a bunch of fun stuff with a super easy to use interface (just select the thing you want to do and press go!) It's like the iPod of radio/rfid hacking.

Yeah, for sure—I looked at the Flipper when it first came out and decided it was overkill for me.

Also the 1-wire/iButton capabilities. Systems that use this kind of keys are probably nonexistent in the US, but in some other countries, they're everywhere.

“1200 seems too high for a phone, so I bought a raspberry Pi and attached a 4G module now I can make calls and browse the internet”…

> “1200 seems too high for a phone, so I bought a raspberry Pi and attached a 4G module now I can make calls and browse the internet”…

That actually sounds really cool...

Until you want to take it with you when you leave the house.

Battery? A pi zero phone is a thing that works

I had no idea. Google tells me there is a sub-Reddit for it!

r/ZeroPhone: ZeroPhone - a Raspberry Pi smartphone

Leave the house?

iPhones aren't sitting unused in a drawer forgotten like 99% of Flippers. There's nothing differentiating or polished about clicking one button versus clicking a different button to clone an RFID tag. I'd rather have cheapo version of 1 time use gizmos.

Is this really the case? I would think there would be a mobile app interface for flipper?

You are correct, there is a mobile app interface for it.

You can check firmware version and device status, update it, have access to file manager, can backup keys, read logs, reboot, speed/stress test, and probably do a lot of other things that I am not aware about.

Any app run on the Flipper Zero can be run and interfaced with from the mobile app. It works quite well.

> I would think there would be a mobile app interface for flipper?

If you want to interact with the software on flipper zero you have to use the "remote" app (or whatever) on the phone. It kinda sucks though because it literally acts just like the physical device. If you wanna type a filename out and think having a full keyboard like on your phone would make that task easier... it doesn't. You are stuck using the fake "buttons" to move the cursor around to each letter just like you would on the device itself.

For me the appeal of Flipper Zero is the mythical rare day when it becomes useful in an emergency, and until then it can stay in my draw peacefully.

There is another possibility: that the Flipper gets an update with the order of a government. For example, to reprogram or shutdown electrical systems in the house. And then it will be a day to remember :D

Or, an equally plausible scenario, it grows its own consciousness and decide to attack, hiding behind its delightful dolphin facade.

Oh, come on, you're being ridiculous. It's much more plausible for the flipper to develop consciousness and steal all the tuna in your pantry.

More likely your smart home app in your phone will do that

Design is way more important than just what things look like. But it contributes to a product's success in ways that are sometimes hard to measure. That's why engineer-driven company don't understand it and engineers (as a sweeping generalization) usually hate it.

I would love love love this to become a vibe.

Or just one of the hundreds of equally capable reasonably priced phones.

The point of the flipper zero is to have one good supported gadget that has a lot of people hacking away with it.

It's the same thing with the raspberry pi, sure you can get some cheap clone off less than ideal places, but you're gonna pay with your time. That's basically it.

That's what I like about InstantPots: having a standardized cooking device makes recipes a lot easier to share.

Well sure, for pressure and slow cooking. You could say the same thing about the microwave.

Chef Mike is the hardest working chef in the kitchen!

My partner's instant pot also does toasting/air frying/normal cooking, I've been very impressed with it.

For anyone with a compatible model you can add this with a lid accessory from Instant Pot: https://instantpot.com/portfolio-item/air-fryer-lid/

Bought this to see what the hype was about. Hardly use it any more, the Instant Pot is just too small to be useful for air frying. 90% of the things come out better in the oven in convection mode.

Biggest level up was just lightly dusting anything with a starch or flour (lentil flour is awesome) and then a few light sprays of olive oil.

Could you?

Two different models microwaves cook pretty differently from each other. Especially if they have differing wattage.

Another is that a microwave doesn't operate at a set pressure, so even the same model will behave differently at different evelations.

That's true of pretty much all cooking (and baking) except when using a pressure cooker, so it's kind of a given - people learn to cook given their local pressure and humidity levels.

But then again, cooking is poor man's process engineering - what you do when you don't particularly care about quality and consistency, or at least don't have access to hardware and methods to ensure them.

Yeah so the instant pot is an exceptionally good kitchen tool for sharing recipes with others in a reproducible way.

Arent most things in a kitchen standardized cooking device? Like stainless pan is stainless pan…

Kind of. But turning a stove up to medium-high and reducing to a simmer can lead to different outcomes depending on how the stove is calibrated and someone's interpretation of "simmer".

> It's the same thing with the raspberry pi, sure you can get some cheap clone...

It's a little different: from when the rPI first came out the price was a big driver of it's popularity. It started with the Model B at $35 (with the Model A at $25 "later this year") and this was so much cheaper than other options at the time. Look over threads from the time [1][2] and you'll see things like: "I teach middle school programming/computer classes. I cannot wait to get my hands on one of these. Right now it's cheap enough that I can tell the parents to buy one for their kids without a problem, and out of pocket it for those few of my students whose parents won't be able to afford it." and "The pricepoint is simply revoultionary. I intend to make a few amateur home automation gadgets with this."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2974292

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3448677

Allowing for inflation they've stayed in roughly the same ballpark, price-wise. It's just that there are now also cheaper boards available, which used not to be the case.

If you want to go deeper with RFID and can spend a bit more (~$50), I am pretty happy with my knockoff Proxmark3 Easy [0] I got on ebay. (Do some research to find a good seller as I have heard some sellers ship bad units). It can do both 125khz and 13.25Mhz RFID/NFC and is easier to use then some of the Android apps for cracking Mifare keys.

For the price, it is great for more complex attacks and almost has all the features of a full Proxmark RDV4 (minus BLE and a battery).

[0] https://proxmark.com/proxmark-3-hardware/proxmark-3-easy

Do you have any resources for learning about RFID? I have some tokens for opening my garage door that I'd like to clone, and I'd like to know how they work.

I would check out the Proxmark3 Github repo [0]. They have a cheatsheet [1] with the basics on how to get started. I also did a talk about RFID security last year about the basics [2]

To get started, the basics are: low freq (LF) is usually around 125khz and is rarely encrypted (HID Prox is the most common in the US). The data is often encoded in Wiegand format for access control systems (something to keep in mind when reading the raw data).

High freq (HF) (aka NFC) is ~13Mhz and is readable by most Android phones with NFC. Not all tag data can be read however. HF cards support a lot of different options including data storage (normally in a block layout with permissions to read and write depending on keys) and encryption (iCLASS and SEOS being the HID offerings and very common). Some can be cloned (like hotel cards) while others (like SEOS) require a downgrade attack to work correctly (SEOS -> normal SEOS reader -> Weigand data -> older style card like HID Prox).

[0] https://github.com/RfidResearchGroup/proxmark3

[1] https://github.com/RfidResearchGroup/proxmark3/blob/master/d...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKOAywZqisc

Thanks! I've just bought a Proxmark clone, so this will be very useful.

So instead of supporting the community and a project with a specific goal, your point is that you bought a Chinese knockoff of a different product?

Yes, gp seems to be pointing out the flippers' largest use cases can be satisfied by significantly cheaper products. They also aren't necessarily "Chinese knockoffs". It just so happens that they bought them from a Chinese online retailer, and I don't see how they could even be called knockoffs because what gp described are fairly different products from flipper.

RFID programmers and USB-C IR Blasters are commodities. How could they possibly be knockoffs?

> I went on Temu and bought

Too bad. I was sincerely hoping nobody would buy anything from them so they would die.

I was thinking the same. It's a proven predatory and reckless company that can sell at these prices because of shady practices. But hey, savings!

I'm not ver familiar with Temu. Are these shady practices documented somewhere, and are they worse than industry peers (aliexpress, wish, overseas ebay, etc)?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://github.com/davincifans101/pinduoduo_backdoor_detaile...

I don't install apps when there is a website I can use from my desktop. So, I guess I have a green light to enjoy Temu.

Do you trust a company that literally hacked customers' device?

To mail me packages of cheap Chinese goods? Yes.

Amazon costs twice as much, and Aliexpress takes twice as long to ship. I have an adblocker installed, so I haven't experienced the annoying ads people are mentioning. I don't install apps when a website is available, so it's not a a spyware concern. If Temu is more evil that the other main two options, I have yet to see an explanation.

AliExpress gotten so expensive too, Temu seems far cheaper (tho lacking lots of more interesting items)

no phone can act as a nfc card. your set up doesn't cover the main use case for the flipper on nfc space

Many (most recent) smartphone models can act as NFC cards very well, with the right software.

Phones unfortunately disallow setting the NFC UID on the hardware level (it's random each time), Flipper allows you to do anything.

That is kinda misleading. They can act as a very limited version of a client of a very specific and largely unused spec.

Sure but I have dozens of blank cards and stickers I bought for a few dollars.

> so I went on Temu and bought a $8 125KHz RFID programmer

OT but if you found it for $8 on Temu, then you can most likely find the exact same device on Aliexpress for $1 - $2. Don't feed Temu - their ads are clogging up my feeds :)

I’ve had one of these guys sitting around for a while - love the hardware, love the concept, but I haven’t really found a lot of use for it - what are y’all using them for?

Yeah I’m in the same boat.

Had it a few years and the whole Tesla port trick gets old quickly.

Just a party gag so far with some friends. Like if I'm at a friend's house and they're using their phone I'll Bluetooth spam them to lock up their phone for a second to mess with them.

Some people are using them to break smart meters:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253591

My friend found out the school he sysadmins for was using weak rfid card keys (despite the readers being smart enough to handle higher level encryption) and found he could clone his key and get in places. So basically he pen tested and then they decided to upgrade to the less or non-cloneable card keys. Security for the win.

Before anyone tries this, doing this without first checking with security/facilities would likely be grounds for “disciplinary action, up to and including termination”

Termination is a favor if security is that lax.

> Termination is a favor

Losing your job is never a favour. Would you prefer termination if any issue was found with your work place?

Losing your job may not seem like a favor at first, it depends on how high you bounce after the fact. Being self employed for 20 years after being laid off was the best favor anyone ever did for me. I would have never taken that initial risk without being pushed into it. Now risk is comfortable.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. It's 100% correct advice. The person you're replying to is a sysadmin so they are probably okay in this situation but cloning access cards without permission would be a serious breach no matter how well intentioned or how easy.

I countered the statement and also getting down voted. The key is to train your brain to like down votes just as much as up votes. When the number is just a number not attached to dopamine then you are free.

This just makes you disappointed if you don’t get negative or positive attention.

I never thought about that. Good point.

there are people that read without voting.

you could be getting attention of all kinds and not even know it.

Another good point.

I bet an equal number vote without reading.

That’s an interesting thought. 0 is a good number. Being satisfied with 0 can be conditioned as well.

The votes are not there for your benefit - they're there to make good/useful/valuable comments rise to the top, and bad/low-value/spam ones fall to the bottom.

I agree with the second part of your statement. There is a real brain chemical benefit to the votes though.

Nontheless the point about learning to accept downvotes is valid because "why was I downvoted?"-crybaby posts are annoying, useless and tend to also get downvoted.

Just as this meta-voting-post of mine should :)

... bad/low-value/spam/contradictory/unpopular opinion/dissidents/opposition/etc.

My comments got more than 200 downvotes and ban in discussion about physics about decade ago, but I nailed the problem. Also, I receive downvotes from Russian imperialists at constant rate just talking about history of Russia and Ukraine, because real history of Russian Federation/Russian Empire is well guarded secret in Russia.

Probably bots

If coercion was going to ever rule the world someone would have accomplished it fully already as many have tried. Yet here we are still free to say nearly whatever the fuck we want in the free world thankfully.

Because that’s, like, just your opinion man. Rules are made up.

Hes getting downwoted because this site is called hacker news. Dont be such a corpo chicken. I am pretty sure people are aware of legality of similar actions and dont need this mentoring.

If only issuing clone-able key cards were the infraction instead...

Unfortunately, it sounds potentially criminal, as well.

You can achieve this exact same use case with a $15 RFID reader/writer, supporting higher frequencies and encryption.

Quite often the keycards have sequential IDs which means you can increase or decrease the number a few times and find a colleagues card with higher or lower privileges than you.

I’m also in this place. I have the wifi card as well and I’ve not taken to writing any hobbyist software for mine.

I had perhaps foolishly hoped to at least get a fun universal remote out of it, and it’s somewhat possible yet the software just isn’t there to bring a robust family of device RF and Bluetooth commands together. It’s no harmony remote.

Spoofing amiibos on TOTK

Same! Pretty handy to have all amiibos in a single place, and quickly iterate through them.

You can likely use your phone. There’s some apps designed for it specifically.

IIRC phones need to be rooted to pretend to be an NFC card, although they can write to blank ones. I've done this before. The Flipper Zero is a lot more convenient though.

Ah yeah you’re right. What I’ve seen actually only lets you write to tags that can then be used.

It's my backup key for my garage and my office door. I also use the universal remote to change TVs in public spaces occasionally. It's a chunker, so it's not a pocket carry, but I keep it in my backpack.

I recently discovered this, which I want to try: https://electroniccats.com/store/flipper-add-on-magspoof/

What kind of garage opener do you have? I thought the Flipper zero won't provide that functionality unless you flash the firmware.

Not terribly difficult to flash the firmware.

But now you have to trust some random person from GitHub.

Almost all software supply chains rely on random persons at some point.

The part I don't get is even if you flash the firmware, does that mean you can make sure it doesn't make all other remotes fail? My understanding of the whole rolling code system was that you could get a few uses and then you were screwed.

If that's not the case I really need to do this because having it handle my tv's, ceiling fans, and garage door would be a nice trick.

If you have control of the opener, couldn’t you use the door’s learning mode and make it into a real opener?

I thought so at first by my initial reading left me somewhat confused on if there's a private key that only certain remotes have or something like that?

It's less of a private key and more a random per-remote prng seed that gets set both on the remote and the door controller when they are paired. When you press the button, remote increments its sequence number and send this number, its ID and a hash of all that and the seed to the controller. Controller checks the hash, then checks that seq number is more than last seen for this remote and opens the door. This protects against replay attacks and fairly uncomplicated to implement.

This sounds a lot like the KeeLoq algorithm [0] (minus the hashing part). From my research into the rolling code space, I think most remotes don't quite have the CPU/featureset to support a real, secure crypto system with things like SHA, AES, and RSA/ECC. Would love to see one though!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KeeLoq

For Chamberlain brands [0] there is some research that shows that their rolling code system (Security+ and Security+ 2.0) is quite easy to decode/decrypt [1]. This feature is supported in the flipper firmware, but is restricted (you can't create a custom remote, only clone is supported) without custom firmware. However, I'm sure you could decode a raw capture file if needed in a pinch.

[0] https://chamberlaingroup.com/our-brands

[1] https://github.com/argilo/secplus

Many rolling door openers don’t use rolling code. Never heard of tvs or ceiling fans using rolling code either

For the record the point was it already handled the fans and tvs fine, but having it store garage codes as well would make it that much more useful

Not the person you are replying to, but I use my flipper for the exact same purpose.

Not sure which specific garage opener my apartment building has. But the fob controller the leasing office gave out is way too weak, so i have to sometimes press it many many times and wiggle it in multiple ways until it triggers the garage door. With flipper, it works on the first try.

A funny anecdote: after using my flipper for about a year, I encountered another flipper user in my apartment elevator (the elevator requires a keyfob to go to any floor except the ground floor). I talked to him for a bit. Turns out, he manages a bunch of boat storage units here (in Seattle) that all use different keyfobs. So for him, it is just pure convenience to carry a single flipper device as opposed to always having a lot of different physical keyfobs on him, and then shuffling through them in his bag to get the right one.

I cloned my apartment key-fob

The WeWork key-fob uses rolling codes so couldn't use it for that...

Which WeWork do you belong to? Boston’s are all low-frequency rfid

This is one in SF. I can clone the card, and it'll work, but then within a few days it won't work any longer.

Does the original keep working?

Yes

Do you recall any of the details? "Rolling code" is not a term often associated with RFID/NFC. The Portland Custom House WeWork used HID Prox.

Basically the reader writes data back to the fob and expects to see it the next time it reads it. This results in either the original or the copy getting de-synced.

One interesting capability that this unlocks is that battery powered, offline readers (think apartment door that uses the same fob as the lobby) can write out things like battery state so that apartment maintenance knows when it's time to swap out batteries.

Just used it + the MCT app on Android to clone my apartment key fob (Schlage 9691T) to a Dangerous Things Magic Ring https://dangerousthings.com/product/magic-ring/

I use it as an easy voltage tester for various hardware projects. I wrote an app that can do GPIO input (the built in only does output) so I can check which parts of a given circuit I'm building are high or low at a given time. Basically like a parallel multimeter.

Cloned a 125KHz RFID keycard on my Flipper as a backup, my Android phone is able to clone 13.56MHz MIFAREs, but not these 125KHz ones.

Nice try FBI agent

My building charges USD 40+ to replace the white rfid cards if you lose it and something similar for the remote control for the parking gate. So i just cloned all my cards and remotes and keep them as backup, just in case.

That’s what keeps me hesitant. Can’t figure out what I’d do with it once unboxed

I use the IR universal remote function to turn off distracting TVs in bars and restaurants.

I had a TV-B-Gone [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV-B-Gone] back when they came out in 2004: good fun.

They cost $15 and were hugely controversial.

>Digging Deeper::TV-B-Gone Device Shuts Public TVs Down

https://mediashift.org/2006/04/digging-deepertv-b-gone-devic...

So you just take the liberty to turn off someone elses devices in someone elses establishment? That's... questionable.

So is forcing me to watch ads. TVs everywhere in public spaces in America is a cancer and I’ll happily turn them off or unplug them whenever and wherever I see them.

This isn’t a thing in other countries, it’s part of American culture.

I have a hard time telling whether you are being sarcastic here.

It's one thing to block ads when they have been loaded into your web browser that is in your room (completely morally and ethically fine). It's a completely different thing to go into someone elses space and start making decisions about what is or isn't running on a tv there.

I like ads as little as you so what I can do is just boycott that restaurant or bar entirely or ask the staff to turn it off. I think it's part of being a well adjusted adult to know what you want or don't want and go about it in a reasonable way (such as asking staff). It's immature though to just do that forcibly.

It is however not my duty to teach you that, so let's leave it at that.

Not being sarcastic (but am indeed questioning if you “like ads as little as [me]”).

Turning off a TV is also morally and ethically fine. I don’t see the big deal. Nothing is happening “forcibly”, I’m just sending out some IR. Nobody’s hurt or damaged.

Do you even hear yourself? Back when I had a Samsung phone with an IR blaster, it was a godsend in that era when, say, your dentist that you were handing thousands of dollars to decided you need to hear 30 second Invisalign commercials over and over at full volume in his waiting room.

Thankfully culture has adjusted some and those conditions aren’t as common as they were.

Part of eating a bar (or similar) is to have a sporting event on TV so you can watch it while being out. I would be upset if someone was turning those off in that type of place. If you don't like it, don't go there.

Why would you go in to a restaurant that has TVs if you don't want that? This is borderline sociopathic behavior. You sound like the religious police of Iran imposing your view of what culture is. You should assimilate instead of trying to impose your draconian views on others

Well I found that my apartment NFC key is hardened against dictionary attacks and I'm not able to copy it. It also helped me learn that my parents' garage door is pretty secure. I'm able to have the opener learn my flipper like any other remote, but not crack it. This is even with the unleashed firmware that doesn't mind violating FCC regulations (some of the frequencies it hops to are restricted).

I was able to copy my work NFC badge, but I'm not really interested in trying it out.

It's handy as a pocket spectrum sniffer, but I don't have much day-to-day use for it outside of that. I'm glad it was given to me because I learned a lot. Potential future use for me might be an amiibo emulator, but I've grown out of those sorts of things.

All garage doors have rolling keys which are non trivial to deal with unless you have pro stuff.

Besides easy to open garage doors with a metal shim to pop the emergency latch. Happened to me once before just zip tying the latch.

You can sync up on rolling codes with the flipper without too much effort. When there are a few private keys involved it gets more difficult.

More like most garage doors sold in the last 20 years have a rolling code system, a few of which are non trivial to deal with.

This is already Western centric, but even here there are a ton of older static and fixed frequency systems still chugging along.

Of these rolling code systems most are not difficult to crack, especially those more than a decade old (and which are still sold today)

Speaking of garage door rolling codes I've noticed there is some sort of slack in the synchronization, probably so that if you press the remote button a few times while out of range your remote still opens the door. My guess is that the receiver looks not only for next code after the last one used, but also for several codes after that.

Question: how many times would you have to press the button on the remote for it to get so far ahead of what the receiver looks for that the remote no longer works without reprogramming the receiver?

There’s a great answer here that describes a rolling code attack and above it, an answer describing that they have slack regarding where they are in the code sequence.

https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/47440

Years ago I had some insight into the "crypto" behind a garage door opener. It was essentially a rolling code and the controller stored the counter for each paired remote and checked it. The package sent by the remote also included its current counter value. If the controller received a counter that was higher than expected, it just updated the stored value and accepted the request, assuming the actual "ciphertext" is correct ofc. The only constraint was that the sequence number must be larger than the stored value.

This also means if you manage to clone a remote, you can just abuse humans. If you opened the door with your clone, the next time the original remote sends its package the sequence number will be too low and the controller will ignore it. But what do you do if your remote didn't work? You press it again, this time the sequence number matches and things work as they should.

For cloning you need to reconstruct the initial seed for the PRNG that is used to create the ciphertext based on the sequence number. Based on how little resources these remotes tend to have, more based on cost than battery life etc, and that some vendors design their own crypto, this can actually work. If you know the algorithm and the seed is only 32 bit, you can easily brute force it.

My apartment uses Latch deadlocks. From what I've read the model _should_ support an NFC key, which of course we don't get. I'd love to figure out if I could do it myself. Ideally I'd be able to use my iPhone that way automatically though (the app on iOS apparently can't due to Apple rules but I'm not an expert). When my hands are full with groceries or whatever it can be a chore to pull out my phone, dig for the app, and get it to unlock the door.

Extra ceiling fan remote was my favourite use.

Couldn’t find a ceiling fan remote one time ( I have 3 with the exact same remote ) and used it to manage fan speeds

Still doesn’t justify the cost but I guess it’s like my leatherman. Hardly use it but handy when I do.

I actually bought it when seeing the pwnagotchi comparison and expected functionality from the wifi/marauder dev boards to be included. Meaning I got my flipper in the first batch for my country but couldn’t get a dev board even months later

I bought it in the hopes of causing mostly harmless mischief, but its capabilities in that realm are oversold.

That said, I knew very little about UART communication or SPI until I started playing with this and an ESP32 device. I also knew very little about bluetooth, RF, and RFID/NFR type stuff until I started exploring the world with this. It's been a fun journey that's rapidly advanced my understanding of quite a few things.

Others have said its overpriced or that you can build your own or whatever, but it's actually just the right price for a cool little educational tool that also works beyond the educational stage. It may even inspire me to build my own advanced version at some point.

If you're already a hardware hacker or EE, this is probably not much more than a toy for you. If you've always wanted to explore some of these topics but had no idea how to start, the Flipper is a good introduction. I immediately flashed it with custom firmware and it was easier than flashing my BIOS.

A bit different than the other replies, but I'm using mine like a very extensible input/output device for my own hardware projects and as a general STM board for fiddling with embedded on an STM chip (I usually stick to RP2040s and ESPs). I'm really interested in making expansion boards for the Flipper, especially ones built on the RP2040. Just sounds like a ton of fun.

Cloning my NFC cards, being my garage opener (I wasn't given a key and couldn't be bothered getting one... and yes, it's my garage), testing equipment using the GPIO pins and what not. Last one is really handy tbh

Edit: oh! I used it today to snap pictures with my phone every second for photogrammetry work, that was neat! Wish I had gotten better point clouds out of Gaussian splatting though

Mine is just a cool-looking paperweight now.

how much paper can it hold down?

I would 100% spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at a website that did wind tunnel testing on paperweights.

Scanned a pet microchip lol. I had planned to build out my own kit but not enough time

Interesting! What kind of animal? Everything I had read suggested it wasn’t strong enough to read these and I couldn’t read my small dog’s chip

I've succesfully read a few pet microchips with it.

Of course, it wasn't useful to do, but hey it worked!

I’ve had no problems reading chips from a few cats, but you do have to scan around a bit because often the chip has moved a bit from where you expect it to be

A specific but satisfying use case, my apt building was being stingy* with handing out RFID tokens so I used it to copy and program a cheap RFID token for lending to a trusted visitor.

* Stingy => security protocols that I agree with in sentiment but unfortunately I need to let my pet sitter in and it's nice to allow them to keep the keys as I travel frequently and key exchanges are less than optimal for my spouse and I

I gave two of them away at a hacker con last year. During the event it was used to open up the charging lid of a Tesla and to remote control a fog machine.

I'm not competent of interested enough to make full use of them but I get the impression that they still have a lot of use in a large part of the world where simple RF is used to open gates and garages.

And of course you can copy and store RFID but you still have to get your hands on the tags. And that's where it falls down in certain more developed countries because they've mostly moved to RFID.

You can emulate any tonie figurine for the toniebox.

I used it a lot at first and it taught me about NFC, IR, etc. I made a few remote controls on it, which is convenient to e.g. turn a fan on at night due to its backlight. I also clone Amiibos for Switch games. And make copies of hotel room keys and RFID tokens for backup purposes although some keys can't be cloned. You can monitor all kinds of wireless signals like garage doors getting fired off around you, which is fun. I know some people use the USB feature to somehow install Windows automatically when they have a bunch of laptops to set up.

I really resent the marketing of this product. It's as if they invented the cheap RF chips they're using and are the exclusive distributors of it.

It's rubbed me as thoroughly dishonest and fraudulent.

I know this is currently a minority position, that's why I took the time to state it.

They made a product that’s really easy to use out of a bunch off of the shelf components. What’s fraudulent about that? I haven’t seen them claim any features that the device doesn’t have. They literally have the chip product numbers they use for each module on their home page! They’re not hiding it!

Really? I like mine. Learned a lot about RFID and was able to successfully copy and clone some hotel prox card. Sure, they didn't "invent" the chips inside, but they put the hardware and software in a nice package, included software, and grew a nice community of hackers around it.

Because of the popularity of the device, there are third parties, some less reputable than others, trying to ride their coattails. Perhaps that's what you're reacting to?

I was able to clone my apartment fob using a tool I got for $30 on Amazon, and it even came with extra blank fobs and cards to clone to. Flipper Zero can more than just clone RFID keys, but my point is that the tools exist to do all the things it does and do them cheaper, and they're just as easy to use.

If you really need a tool that can do them all, though, I can't really argue with the utility; but I do kind of agree with the GP comment that Flipper didn't exactly do anything that hasn't been done before.

Other than create the marketing buzz and pull together a community of hackers to make the on ramp to this type of programming easier.

And that's really it. It's purely a marketing play. I guess my other frustration is when I see people who I thought were pretty clever not realize that

No offense, but that is a pretty one-dimensional view of products and businesses. So many great products are just an exciting and/or user-friendly version of a simple concept and well marketed which opens up the doors to a much larger audience than the original concept otherwise would've received.

This approach isn't a cheap cop out, it is serving a genuine utility and bridging the technology to more people.

I get it at this sophisticated level as well. I'm surprised by how many don't

>Flipper was inspired by the pwnagotchi project, but unlike other DIY boards, Flipper is designed with the convenience of everyday usage in mind

Front page, nothing about their copy or their website says what you think it says.

You know they've released a lot more than a landing page, right? They were initially a kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flipper-devices/flipper...

They created a fast-food substitution product and have been trying to pass it off as the real thing. It's a hardware script kiddie device and that's exactly how their videos depict it.

I was always turned off by their approach since first seeing it in 2019. I've played with the device, get their facebook ads all the time, tried to change my mind about it but 5 years later I keep coming back to the same animosity towards it.

These are all easy to teach things and this thing shrouds that fact through product alienation intentionally distancing the user from any real hacker education and replacing it with animations and theatrics.

I'm cool being dismissed as a crank. They're obviously successful millionaires and I'm not.

It sounds more like gatekeeping to me rather than being cranky. Not saying you are actively doing so, but I'm not sure RFID and the likes are "easy to teach things". Quite the contrary, actually. So if this motivates some teens to go out possibly discover an affinity for hacking, it has done its job. That's my thought of this product anyway.

I think you're just feeling that you knew about something "before it was cool", and now anyone can do it so you aren't special anymore.

Oh man. If my friends and I had this in high school things probably would have gotten even more out of control.

Yeah we found a remote control cloning app for a palm pilot that had IR and caused enough trouble randomly turning tvs on with that.

Bad actors are going to ruin this cool little device for everyone else. For every story I hear about a cool usecase for it, there's another about it being used to annoy or harm others.

Tools can be used for good and bad. This isn’t anything new and doesn’t “ruin” a device.

The person you're responding to probably means that bad actors will cause the device to become illegal to buy or use in certain areas as a result of being associated with illegal or harmful behavior.

It’s already banned in Brazil, for instance

It is true, tools will be misused, banning already happened to knifes and scissors in narrow or broader context for example. Will see how this one will be regulated, if will be at all. If they are smart - usually not, but at least less smart than paranoid - then it will not be a blanket rule, actually cannot be without unplugging all computation and wireless devices.

thanks sneak, very insightful

Flipper Zero is/was banned on eBay.

I tried repeatedly to sell mine there, because I'd see some auctions for them complete. Then they told me it was definitely banned, because it could be used for (IIRC) RFID hacking.

(Fair enough. I ended up having to sell mine locally, for a lot less money than what the occasional auction would complete for on eBay. And finding a buyer locally was harder, and with much higher rate of flaking. As someone with deep frugal influences, who likes to save money when buying things, and to sell things once not really needed, I really like eBay when it works OK.)

Flipper Zero was designed in Russia, the company moved since the start of the war.

Related. Others?

Apple Shuts Down Flipper Zero's Ability to Shut Down iPhones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38656607 - Dec 2023 (26 comments)

Tiny device is sending updated iPhones into a never-ending DoS loop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38125426 - Nov 2023 (108 comments)

Probably Buy a Flipper Zero Before It's Too Late - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025786 - Oct 2023 (27 comments)

Flipper Zero can be used to crash iPhones running iOS 17 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37919396 - Oct 2023 (33 comments)

UK airport confiscates passenger's Flipper Zero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37707486 - Sept 2023 (44 comments)

Flipper-Xtreme-Firmware: Give your Flipper Zero the power it is craving - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37519277 - Sept 2023 (4 comments)

Flipper Zero can spam nearby iPhones with Bluetooth pop-ups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397481 - Sept 2023 (44 comments)

Flipper Zero Controlling Traffic Lights [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36756787 - July 2023 (3 comments)

Flipper Zero Self Destructs an Electricity Smart Meter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253591 - June 2023 (210 comments)

FlipperZero: 1 Month Battery Life with Firmware Update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35735415 - April 2023 (82 comments)

Flipper Zero banned by Amazon for being a ‘card skimming device’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35481580 - April 2023 (133 comments)

Brazil seizing Flipper Zero shipments to prevent use in crime - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35109931 - March 2023 (67 comments)

Hacker Uncovers How to Turn Traffic Lights Green with Flipper Zero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34872104 - Feb 2023 (4 comments)

Trying Out Flipper Zero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34215390 - Jan 2023 (99 comments)

Hands on with Flipper Zero, the Hacker Tool Blowing Up on TikTok - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34102109 - Dec 2022 (2 comments)

FlipperZero hardware hacker released for US sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33720764 - Nov 2022 (7 comments)

Bad news: US Customs have seized a container with 15k Flippers Zero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33073141 - Oct 2022 (13 comments)

PayPal blocked Flipper Zero account with $1.3M - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32739950 - Sept 2022 (105 comments)

Flipper Zero – Portable Multi-Tool Device for Geeks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32166058 - July 2022 (263 comments)

Quick Start Guide for Flipper Zero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368209 - May 2022 (137 comments)

Flipper Zero: How it’s made and tested - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27704883 - July 2021 (34 comments)

Flipper Zero: Bringing Cases to Perfection - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27479684 - June 2021 (6 comments)

Case manufacturing behind the scenes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27155584 - May 2021 (1 comment)

Flipper Zero: Tamagochi for Hackers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26405919 - March 2021 (48 comments)

Flipper Zero Manufacturing and Shipping Plan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870255 - Jan 2021 (14 comments)

Flipper Zero – Tamagochi for Hackers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23996733 - July 2020 (53 comments)

Show HN: Flipper Zero – Tamagotchi for Hackers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22941733 - April 2020 (10 comments)

Tamagotchi for Hackers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22859083 - April 2020 (1 comment)

Flipper Zero: Under Development Multi-Tool Device for Pen-Testers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21842830 - Dec 2019 (1 comment)

I love this thing but I mostly just use it to avoid touching hotel TV remotes.

“Outside” perspective after I was recently gifted one for my birthday: it’s a fun and easy tool to learn about hardware. I became a programmer through the “Applied Math” route (Causal Inference -> Probability -> UL -> DL -> CS). Never owned a Raspberry Pi/Arduino and too busy to get into hobbyist electronics. The Flipper is accessible and low friction, motivates learning eg about GPIO, and is the first time I’ve messed with firmware and signals.

I've mainly use Flipper Zero to duplicate my digital apartment keys (iButton then later RFID fobs). It's so easy to duplicate a physical apartment key, but making backups of the digital equivalents is annoyingly tedious. Plus, apartment managers treat them as scarce commodities and refuse to give backups.

With Flipper Zero I now have backup keys in my backpack, on my dog's leash, in my running belt, and with close friends. It's great.

Hard to justify the cost. I see the ads everywhere for this device. If you have this product please review it for everyone.

Anyone tried to crash Bluetooth speakers with this? I’d buy one immediately if I can mute loud tvs and harmlessly disable Bluetooth speakers from a distance.

My new rental only provided us with one garage door remote and it looks ancient. Fairly certain this could an overly expensive extra garage door remote.

It doesn't operate at bluetooth's frequency. You could definitely mute TV's with the IR blaster.

Even beyond the wireless stuff it's focused on, it's super useful as a combined UART bridge, SPI Flash dumper, DAPLink debugger and other hardware tools.

The flipper has great size/capabilities. I mainly use it for NFC/NF wireless pen-testing. Some clients use NF payments and this gives me a single click testing tooling.

As others have said, if you want real capabilities get into SDR. My real kit includes HackRF piped into wireshark.

Lastly, a community that has seen a bump recently, Pwnagotchi. Its worth checking out and to me has alot of potential.

I got one some time ago, and like my rpi, has been sitting in teh drawer since.

Another one of those "Sounds cool, but not really useful" tools

A lot of people buy tools and then never use them, just like people buy trucks and 4x4's, but never use them to haul cargo or go off-road. When you buy a tool, you generally want to have a job in mind, and then have the follow-through to do that job.

I have seen a lot of hardware addon boards lately. They are rarely, if ever in stock. Are there any good ones?

I'd love to have one to learn more about radios with my kids. Some of Flipper's apps look pretty interesting too.

Probably out of scope, but I hope FlipperOne has a few environmental sensors too. (In a perfect world, it would also have thermal imaging, but these sensors are way too expensive.)

My Flipper Zero has been useful for me while living in Ukraine.

For some reason, many apartment buildings require the use of a little electronic tag not only to open the outside gates, but also to operate the elevator to reach someone's apartment. This also includes trying to use the elevator to reach the ground floor, e.g., when you leave your friend's apartment and you are going home. So you can't leave the building with the elevator without your friend coming out and unlocking it for you. It's madness.

So, I clone my friends' tags (with their knowledge) and come and go as I please.

The initial marketing mentioned that flippers can exchange collected data as a social interaction. The reason I haven’t bought it is that I don’t want private stuff used and home being leaked to flippers nearby or to a central server. Any experience with that?

As of firmware version 0.97.1 (current at the time of this comment,) no such feature exists.

Everything is recorded on an SD card, so you could copy the files online somewhere and download others files. There is no automatic sharing.

The problem with the Flipper is it's missing documentation. And new learners need documentation. The response from the Flipper team has been telling people to read the source code.

I bring this when travelling so I can dupe remotes and door keys.

I got one. Only thing I used it for was scanning my dogs microchip

this seems like a cool device that people actually like, but it's crazy that i've still never seen a blog post of "hey check out this cool thing i did" that just happens to use a flipper. it's always the other way around, the point is to have a flipper and find things to do with it, not to have a flipper because it does something you want.

i buy lots of nerdy toys, but can we all just admit that this is a toy, not a tool?

I saw this and thought "I need this toy!"

Their website wouldn't take my credit card. Needless to say, it's a good card and I used it on other sites that same day and after. I wrote to Support.

Three days later, they wrote back and suggested I try a different card. Sorry, Flipper, you lose. Nice idea, but a company is more than a piece of hardware.

I'm thinking about building gadgets that serve parallel functionalities:

1. Relatively small to carry around.

2. Specifically built for one topic of purposes.

3. Can be achieved by a single hacker with on market tools.

What kind of tools have you built for yourself? Here are some examples I have in mind:

Hardware debugging dongles, rom burning boards and of course Flipper zero itself.

They're never in stock! They need to fix the logistical issues with supply.

I have one, loaded it with Xtreme firmware (better than unleashed etc.), and works great! some people are missing the point of this device and start comparing it to an advanced NFC tool or other SDR, that’s not its intended use, it is AIO swiss army tool style that you will (might) find it handy in situations that other advanced tools aren’t around, for example I have some advanced SDR like BladeRF and limeSDR, far better in terms of everything than the flipper, but in many situations it would be impossible to use one of these SDR, not just how suspicious it will look with all that gears, but simply you just don’t have it at that time. So I have my flipper loaded with all fobs keys, garage (yes it does work with rotating key if you pair it), all my home sub-ghz, IR, are all backed up as well, and as someone who works in robotics I find the quick access to GPIO is handy sometimes, among other usages, for example, I have a friend who lives inside a uni dorm, and if you happen to lock your keycard inside your apartment, the cost to just open that door is $50, not even replacing the card.. so after he paid it few times I took a backup of his card, and whenever he locks it, he will call me and I open it for him.

I don't even do hardware and want one.

Is it as great as it seems?

fun toy to get people into security.

$310 AUD... that's insane!

I have one, honestly too expensive in hindsight for what it is. I make impulsive buys.

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