Throughout the United States, Countless buildings, from government offices to the door of your next hotel room, are protected by RFID-controlled locks. On a recent trip through Manhattan, I passed about 20 of these keyless entry systems, which are among the most widespread in the world. But a fun, palm-sized device with a Tamagotchi-like interface can probably thwart the locks on many of these doors.
The $200 device is called Flipper Zero and is a portable testing tool designed for hackers of all levels of technical experience. The tool is smaller than a phone, is easily hidden, and is equipped with a variety of radios and sensors that allow it to intercept and play signals from keyless entry systems, Internet of Things sensors, garage doors, NFC cards, and virtually any other device. that communicates wirelessly over short ranges. For example, in just a few seconds, I used Flipper Zero to seamlessly clone the signal from an RFID-enabled card safely stored inside my wallet.
If you’d only heard about Flipper Zero through TikTok, where the tool has gone viral, you might think it was a toy that could make ATMs spit out money, cars unlock themselves, and gas pour out of pumps. free of charge. I spent the last week testing one to determine if the world was as vulnerable to Flipper Zero as social media made it out to be. What I found was counterintuitive: Many of the most dramatic videos posted on TikTok are probably montages (most modern wireless devices aren’t susceptible to simple replay attacks), but the Flipper Zero remains undeniably powerful, giving aspiring hackers and experienced testers a convenient opportunity. new tool to investigate the security of the world’s most ubiquitous wireless devices.
In reviews, people compare Flipper Zero to a Swiss army knife for physical penetration testing. But during the week I spent testing the Flipper Zero, it felt more like a black light, something I could literally hold up to a device that would reveal information, invisible to the human eye, about how it worked, what data it emitted, and how often. I was doing like that.
Here’s a short list of some things I learned with the help of Flipper Zero this week: Some animal microchips will tell you your pet’s body temperature. The tire pressure sensor on my neighbor’s car leaks data to anyone within range of the signal. My iPhone bombards my face with infrared signals every few seconds. My home security system has built-in signal interference detection. Some hotel and office bathrooms have soap dispensers that indicate whether they need to be refilled.
When I told Alex Kulagin, one of the co-creators of Flipper Zero, about my experiences using his tool to make these types of mundane observations, he explained that this is exactly what the device is designed to do. “We want to help you understand something in depth, explore how it works, and explore the wireless world around you that’s hard to understand,” he says.
