Flipper Zero is causing iPhone mayhem by crashing them

The Flipper Zero is currently one of the easiest ways to exploit a vulnerability on Apple’s iPhone and there’s first-hand evidence to go with it.

The Flipper Zero appears to be the root cause of a lot of wireless Apple devices suffering from boot loops and crashes. Spotted on Mastodon, a professor of cybersecurity, Dr. Jeroen van der Ham-de Vos, reported that a series of devices on his train journey began to crash.

Further in the thread, Ham-de Vos managed to identify the person and “asked him to stop f*cking around.”

That thread is from October 18, and now Ars Technica is reporting that the issue is persisting. This is despite Apple updating iPhones to iOS 17’s new suite of patches to fix these vulnerabilities. According to the Ars report, Apple declined to comment on the situation, which currently can only be solved by turning off Bluetooth.

iOS and Android devices facing Bluetooth exploit despite updates

The attack exploits a bug in iOS and iPadOS forcing the connection to an Apple TV remote. It will then flood the device with notifications. After that, it renders the device almost useless as it reboots itself, or crashes entirely.

It’s not only Apple facing these problems. Samsung’s Android phones can also be blasted with the issue, sending dozens, if not hundreds of notifications all at once to crash the device.

However, the Flipper Zero can’t do this out of the box. A lot of the huge exploits and hacking seen across the web require custom firmware – in this case, Flipper Xtreme – to add more functions to the device. Of course, as the Flipper Zero is aimed at those in the know, and there’s extensive documentation for installing, it’s relatively easy to get the exploit running.

What is a Flipper Zero?

The Flipper Zero is a small multi-tool that focuses on wireless signals like RFID, NFC, and Bluetooth. It’s not intended for malicious use, but a quicker – and cheaper – way to do testing or fixes on everyday hardware.

Though not intended to cause trouble, the Flipper Zero has been unlocking Teslas or causing havoc in supermarkets by turning off information screens.

The Flipper Zero is a fantastic tool filled with a new suite of apps and has been incredibly handy. In a recent stay at a hotel, we used it to copy the hotel card in case we forgot it and then promptly forgot the Flipper in the room.