The latest iOS 17.2 beta can’t put a stop to schmucks crashing your iPhone from 160 feet

At every demonstration, there are one or two who hold up “I’m here for violence” signs. These are exactly the type of people who should never have a Flipper Zero – a $169 multi-tool aimed at penetration testers and hobbyists, capable of interacting with the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol that allows transfers wireless data between devices. I told you, this Flipper Zero gnat has recently been used to annoy iPhone users, and more: to make their devices unusable for a while.

NOW, 9to5Mac reports that not even the latest beta version of iOS 17 (iOS 17.2 beta 2 for developers) is able to fix this problem and avoid it.

Wait what?

The Flipper Zero wasn’t created for this purpose, but because its firmware is open source, it quickly turned into a digital pest for iPhone users. It can perform denial of service (DoS) attacks, spamming iPhones and iPads with an overwhelming amount of Bluetooth connection notifications. All these notifications cause the device(s) to hang for a few minutes and then restart. The attack uses a Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) pairing sequence flaw. Apple uses several BLE technologies in its ecosystem, including AirDrop, HandOff, iBeacon, HomeKit, and more to do with Apple Watch.

The worst part is that you don’t even have to be close to your “victim” for the attack to occur, as the cursed gadget has a range of around 50 meters (~164 feet).

What can I do to prevent this from happening?

At this point the only solution is to turn off Bluetooth, but not from the Control Center. You need to disable Bluetooth in settings, this is the only time the attack cannot penetrate your device. Airplane mode doesn’t work, keep that in mind.