Credit: Flipper Zero
- Flipper Zero is a $200 portable pen-testing tool that can read and emulate a variety of radio waves.
- Bad actors have used the Flipper Zero to send a barrage of Bluetooth requests to nearby iPhones, Android phones, and Windows devices.
- On iOS 17, this can crash the iPhone and lead to a reboot.
iPhones are known for their security, thanks to Apple’s “walled garden” approach that locks down the complete ecosystem. But sometimes, malicious actors don’t want to steal your data; they just want to annoy you. If you’ve recently faced a barrage of random accessory pairing requests on your iPhone and had your phone reboot at the end, someone around you just used a Flipper Zero on you.