this Flipper Zero is probably one of the most versatile and controversial A device the size of a keychain has hit the market. The device can scan, receive, transmit and simulate many types of signals. It can scan NFC and RFID signals used by many common products. It can replicate the frequency of use of your workplace ID card.Here’s a $169 trick Very useful for everyday operations such as opening a garage door Or penetration testing security systems.The Canadian government also accused it Ability to duplicate vehicle key fobs even Shut down iPhone via DDoS attack. Apple fixed this problem, so Flipper can be said to have done its job as a testing tool.
Flipper co-founder and COO Alex Kulagin has heard a lot of controversy, but he still believes the product is more than just a go-to device for laypeople. mr robotStyle hacker.and Flipper releases its game controller plugin This month, Kuragin considers Zero a Swiss Army Knife for geeks or people simply curious about technology. To him, Flipper Zero is a whistleblower on the world’s security systems, which rely on technology that is old, inferior and easily hacked. Gizmodo spoke with Kulagin at length about how Flipper plans to expand his first product beyond a Tamagotchi-sized body, and how he hopes to move away from the widespread controversy that came with it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Gizmos: So can you give me a brief introduction to what the video game mod is and what it adds to Flipper Zero that doesn’t already exist?
Alex Kurakin: We are very excited because this is our first collaboration or partnership of this scale. Raspberry Pi is a legend in this world. The video game model brings entertainment features as Flipper lacks some of these important features. First, with the video output, you can now actually mirror the Flipper screen to a larger TV. very funny. This is weird because the Flipper screen is so small. The resolution is similar to 640х480, but we can scale it up. It’s fun to watch on a huge 4K TV. So the flippers become very large, but very sharp. We built in a motion sensor IMU so you can play by tilting your device.One of the first demo games built for this was Air Brick Breaker Game, very fun.
Geez: Like a Wii controller?
and: Yes. The third main feature, although equally important, is built on the Raspberry Pi microcontroller. It can use existing applications and code libraries that already exist and are built for the Raspberry Pi Pico. The chip is quite powerful and has some unique features. For example, you can run Python on it. Flipper usually only runs C [the coding language]and Python is easier to understand.
Geez: So it can already be connected to the TV [through IR signals] and other IoT technologies, but will you be able to cast your own videos from a separate device to another screen through Flipper. Or even project it onto a screen in Times Square?
and: No, it actually requires a cable connection to do this. It’s like the standard DVI-D output supported by many TVs. I don’t think there’s much you can do in this area, but you never know. Sometimes the community comes up with some crazy abilities. However, by design, it’s more for fun than hacking.
Geez: Understood. This shows what your company’s philosophy is. You guys created this technology for DIYers, and people were just making their own stuff. Where are your thoughts when you design something like this? How did something like this come together in this way?
and: Flipper is a very scalable thing. So its core needs to be designed. We open sourced it, it has all these GPIO pins, and it already has a lot of functionality out of the box. But we designed it this way to extend it further. Often, we have some in-house hardware and software that we need for work, or just for fun. The idea of outputting video from the Flipper to an external display was actually a project started by one of our developers because we wanted to display the Flipper screen on the front door of our office. They used a Raspberry Pi Pico for this and we did some testing that showed it actually works. So we did a few things to do that. Then it became this idea that we could actually make products out of this. This is similar to how we sell WiFi development boards because our suppliers don’t have this debugging hardware in stock due to chip shortages. So we had to take out our hardware and actually debug and use it within the team.
Geez: How do you connect to the Raspberry Pi? Have you ever contacted them, or have you been communicating with them for a while to establish some sort of partnership?
and: I think they contacted us first. At some point, we just started talking about what we could do together. Because for them, before they were buying chips from other suppliers, now they’re trying to make their own chips. This is an important area of business for them. So we try to find places where we can connect so that their audience and our audience will be happy with our product.
Geez: You are in an interesting place. These devices are legal almost everywhere, but you get criticism from people, and I don’t know if they really understand what the device is, or how to use it. What are your thoughts on the current discussion about Flipper itself and how people are using it now (whether for “legitimate purposes” or just penetrating different systems to prove they can)?
and: It’s important to know that Flipper isn’t actually cutting-edge technology. We package all of these technologies, like access control technologies that we use every day, into one device. But it doesn’t interact with most ultra-modern, cutting-edge technology, right? Like modern cars, there’s really nothing the Flipper can do about it. I think it’s important to understand that there’s a lot of stuff around us that is really outdated and old that people don’t really think about it a lot. For example, you try to install the most secure key lock on your door, but many people think you shouldn’t have a secure garage door, and they have garage openers from the 2000s. People just don’t think it can be hacked in any way, but people use these cheap products that are unencrypted and the vulnerabilities have been known for decades. We are not doing anything new in this area. But awareness among users who own these devices is low.
Geez: So you think you’re raising awareness about these issues?
and: What Flipper brings is the realization that, guys, this thing is not secure, like if you should really think about it, if a $100 toy can hack something, maybe it’s too old. This is important to us. Now we are seeing some vendors selling NFC card readers actually bringing new products to market and advertising Flipper. They’re using it as a marketing ploy, which is a win for us, right? It means we did something good. This is the philosophy we adhere to.
Geez: What about people who don’t use it in the prescribed way?There are several other firmwares that support Flipper Zero
and: We monitor a lot of things that happen on our devices. We have Discord, we have Reddit to see what’s going on. We monitor alternative firmware and what’s happening there since it’s open source as well. If we find something sensitive enough, we try to contain it. Like sub-gigahertz frequencies and login codes. Even if it’s really old and hacked in many ways, even if it’s technically possible to replay it, we don’t let users do that, there’s no button. My analogy is that it’s like a key lock or a door handle. If it’s a doorknob, it’s not encrypted in any way. This isn’t actually a hack, you’re just making people aware that your stuff isn’t secure at all.
Geez: I think this goes back to some people’s most basic beliefs about hacking, especially when most hacking is really just social engineering. Do you sometimes feel like you’re almost on a mission to educate the world on what these definitions mean from a technical perspective?
and: Many people buy Flipper without knowing anything. They see TikTok and think it’s cool, they see it doing weird things like opening a Tesla charging port, what do they think this cyberpunk device is? They bought it and said, “Well, what can I do with it.” These were just technology-curious people, not established geeks who had never touched a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino thing. But these little tips make them realize how it actually works. We think it’s really important for people to understand how these things work and what the risks are. Many people have more sophisticated devices.Something for sale on Amazon [Flipper has been banned from the site] That’s more capable. We do not believe this poses additional risks. We think we’re reducing the risk for a lot of people just by letting them know that their stuff is defective.
Geez: Will our technological capabilities ever reach a point where they are commensurate with our technological knowledge as a society?
and: I think there’s enough publicity for this. Before 2015, no one thought much about data privacy. We just put things on Facebook without thinking about what happens next. Over the past eight years, this has become a big thing to talk about. Everyone is thinking about privacy and cookies and all this stuff right now. It became so big because the media talked about it so much, and Flipper got the media talking about these things. For example, the Apple DDoS incident. It’s been around for a long time and you can do it on a lot of devices, but Flipper made it more accessible, people started talking about it, and Apple has to really fix it, which is a good thing. You cannot reach maximum consciousness. It’s impossible to have complete consciousness, but maybe we can have it at least on some basic level.
Geez: What are your future plans? Do you plan to continue expanding Flipper’s functionality with more modules?
and: On the model side, we are developing some models right now.In terms of other things coming out this year, it’s going to be less impactful than [the Video Game Module], but we have some important technologies that we have always wanted to implement on paper, but currently do not have the physical hardware to implement them. Our ultimate goal is to create a market for it. We don’t restrict people from making and selling their own modules. We want to be like the Arduino Marketplace, where there are countless models that people can buy from different vendors. The bigger goal is to show what you can actually do. But we will launch more modules, we will see. We’re also looking at new devices we’re building outside of Flipper Zero.
Geez: Can you give me any hints on future plans for non-Flipper devices?
and: Well, not really, not yet. But we’ll let you know.