TheFlipper Zero may be one of the most versatile, and most controversialkeychain-sized devices ever put to market.
The equipment can scan, receive, send, and mimic several types of signals.
It can scan NFC and RFID signals used by many common products.
Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
It can replicate the frequency used for your workplaces ID card.
Its a $169 doohickeyuseful for everyday operations like opening your garage dooror pen-testing security systems.
Apple fixed that issue so the Flipper arguably did its job as a testing tool.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Alex Kulagin: Were very excited because its our first collaboration or partnership of such scale.
Raspberry Pi are legends in this world.
The Video Game Model brings entertainment capabilities, as the Flipper lacked some of those important features.
Its very fun to see.
Its weird, because the Flipper screen is super small.
Its like 640480 resolution, but we are able to scale it up.
And its fun to see it on a huge 4K TV.
So the Flipper becomes very big, but its very sharp.
One of the first demo games built for this is the Air Arkanoid game, which is very fun.
Giz: Like a Wii controller?
The chip is quite powerful and has some unique features.
For example, you might run Python on it.
Even go so far as to cast it onto the screens of Times Square?
AK: No, it actually requires the cable connection to do so.
Its like a standard DVI-D output, which many TVs support.
Sometimes the community comes up with some crazy abilities.
But, by design, its more for entertainment and not for hacking stuff.
That kind of points to your companys philosophy.
You guys create this tech very much for the DIYers and the people are just making their own stuff.
When youre designing something like this, where does your mind go?
How did this kind of thing come together in the way that it did?
AK: Flipper is a very expandable thing.
So its core invites design.
But we designed it that way to expand it even more.
So we hacked some things to do it.
Then it became like this idea that we can actually make a product out of it.
So we had to come up with our hardware to actually debug and use it inside the team.
Giz: How did you get connected to Raspberry Pi?
AK: I think they reached out to us first.
At some point, we just started talking about what we could do together.
And its an important area of business for them.
Giz: You guys are in an interesting place.
AK: Its important to know that Flipper is actually not, you know, cutting edge technology.
But its not like it can interact with most of the super modern, cutting-edge technologies, right?
Like a modern car, the Flipper cant actually do anything with that.
We dont do anything new in this area.
But the awareness of users who possess these devices is very low.
Giz: So you see yourselves as bringing awareness to these issues?
Giz: What about the people who dont use it in the prescribed way?
We have Discord and we have a Reddit to see whats happening.
We monitor alternative firmwares and whats happening there because its also open-sourced.
And if we see that something can be sensitive enough, we take a stab at contain it.
Like with sub-Ghz frequencies and login codes.
The analogy I have is if its like a keylock or a doorknob.
If its a doorknob, its not encrypted in any way.
Its not actually hacking something, youre just making people realize that your thing is not secure at all.
AK: Many people buy Flipper without knowing anything.
They buy it, and they say okay, what can I do with it.
This is just tech-curious people, not established geeks, who never touched a Raspberry Pi or Arduino stuff.
But these little hacks bring them to an awareness of how it actually works.
We think its important to educate people about how this stuff works and what the risks are.
There are many people with much more sophisticated devices.
Theres stuff sold on Amazon [Flipper has been banned from the site] that is far more capable.
We dont see it as creating more risk.
AK: I think with enough publicity about it.
Before 2015, nobody was thinking about data privacy too much.
We were just putting things on Facebook and didnt think about what happened next.
For the last eight years, its become a very big thing to talk about.
And now everybodys thinking about privacy, about cookies, all this stuff.
For example this Apple DDoS thing.
You cannot reach maximum awareness.
Giz: What are your future plans?
Are you going to keep expanding the Flippers capabilities with more modules?
AK: In terms of models, we have a few in development right now.
Our ultimate goal is to make a market for it.
We didnt restrict people from making and selling their own modules.
The greater goal is to show what you actually can do.
But well launch a couple more modules and well see.
We also have our attention on new devices we built outside of Flipper Zero.
AK: Ehh, not really, not at the moment.
But well let you know.
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Took 2 weeks to get the part," one owner said.
