One morning two weeks ago, security researcher Jeroen van der Ham was traveling by train in the Netherlands when his iPhone suddenly displayed a series of pop-ups that made using his device nearly impossible. To Mr van der Ham’s surprise and dismay, the same debilitating stream of pop-ups was repeated on his way home that afternoon. not only on his own iPhone, but also on the iPhones of other passengers in the same vehicle.
Van der Ham said the suspect, another passenger on the train, A Flipper Zero device with custom firmware to send a combination of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) alerts to phones iPhone running iOS 17 located nearby.
Flipper Zero’s portability, which allows testing of large numbers of radio frequencies from a short distance, has made it a device of choice for malicious actors who frequently use it. clone hotel cards or read RFID chipsand now iPhones are crashing.
The device will be able to send a continuous stream of Bluetooth messages to nearby iPhones using custom firmware. These Bluetooth messages keep appearing on your iPhone as a request to pair with a Bluetooth accessory.
Obviously, you cannot click on these connection requests because they are a ghost signal from a non-existent device. On the victim’s iPhone, these messages may appear as requests to connect to the TV. repeats until the phone eventually reboots.
If you have an iPhone running iOS 17, the only reliable way to protect yourself from pop-ups and crash attacks is to turn off Bluetooth. Apple’s latest iOS 17.1 update did not fix the problem, and Apple does not currently have a solution to fix the flaw.
