According to BGR , in describing this new form of attack, security researcher Jeroen van der Ham said that while riding a train one day, his iPhone started to reboot itself, showing the status of being connected to an Apple TV. When Ham looked around, he saw that he was not the only one as other iPhones were having the same problem. Ham said that he tried to enable Lock mode but it did not work.
It appears that the iPhone models affected by this vulnerability are running iOS 17 or later.
While on his way home, Ham said the previous problem returned. Coincidentally, Ham noticed that a person from the previous train car was sitting nearby. After recognizing the person, Ham asked him to “stop it.”
Notably, Ham said that this was not some kind of test to see if the attack technique worked because the person had the attack feature enabled for 1.5 hours on the train, where everyone around him saw their Apple devices rebooting continuously.
These types of hacks have always been possible, but they required “special equipment and a fair amount of expertise,” Ars Technica explains. Now, with the $200 Flipper Zero, anyone with little knowledge of complex radio frequency hacking can perform these attacks.
The new attack appears to be focused on iOS 17 devices, so if you’re still running iOS 16, it won’t affect you. Van der Ham has tested a number of ways an attacker could use the device to hack an iPhone. The only workaround at the moment is to turn off Bluetooth in the Settings app, as turning it off from the Control Center isn’t enough.
Another thing to note is that the attacker doesn’t appear to have compromised a user’s device by accessing data, but simply messing with it. Apple has yet to acknowledge the attack or issue an update to fix the way some communication devices can interfere with a user’s iPhone.
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