Apple remains quiet about the Flipper Zero attacks that are forcing iPhone users running iOS 17 or later into three-minute DoS loops.
Back in September, we told you about the little Flipper Zero device that is being used to attack iPhones through the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol rendering all units with Bluetooth enabled unresponsive at first. Any Bluetooth devices connected to impacted iPhones are forced to disconnect. Finally, the iPhone reboots and the whole loop starts all over again in a journey that lasts three minutes each time.Security researcher Jeroen van der Ham was on a train in the Netherlands two weeks ago when pop-ups started appearing on his iPhone. He described the attack by writing to ArsTechnica. „My phone was getting these popups every few minutes and then my phone would reboot,“ he wrote. „I tried putting it in lock down mode, but it didn’t help. Your phone becomes almost unusable. You can still do stuff in between for a couple of minutes, so it’s really annoying to experience. Even as a security researcher who had heard about this attack, it’s really hard to realize that that is what’s going on.“If you don’t disable Bluetooth while out in public, your iPhone could be the target of a DoS attack
The good news is that no permanent damage is done to the phone although this denial of service (DoS) attack might lead those unaware of what is really going on to believe that their iPhone is broken.
