Becoming Flipper One

Four years have passed since the release of Flipper Zero – an eternity in the fast-moving IT industry. The name "Flipper Zero" suggests that the next version could be named "Flipper One," and indeed, the Flipper developers announced the upcoming version last spring before the announcement disappeared from the company website virtually overnight – although it still exists in the Internet Archive (Flipper Devices 2023). Many signs indicate that the developers are pushing ahead with further development, including improved hardware and Kali Linux support, and the community is eagerly awaiting the successor to the Zero version, which will – that much seems certain – be called Flipper One.

Initial reactions from the Flipper community to the One announcement were positive, according to which, it will be based on an i.MX6 SoC and feature open source hardware and software. The system-on-chip (SoC) will have a 1GHz CPU and integrate WiFi support. The improved NFC module should be able to read and write all ISO 14443 cards.

According to what is known thus far, the developers have a combination of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and SDR in mind. The question of the best choice of WiFi module has also proved problematic because many chips are outdated. Also unclear is whether architectural considerations are responsible for the delays. Costing seems to be having an influence on the launch date in view of the extended features. Given the unclear future of Flipper, it can be assumed that it will be some time before Flipper One is released.

Conclusions

Flipper Zero is a practical multifunctional tool that allows you to discover vulnerabilities in your infrastructures and system configurations. It can be used to check a variety of devices and services for potential configuration errors. The greatest benefit is probably that you can go walkabout and show people in real time how easily vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers.