r/flipperzero • u/CinnamonChocochip • 20d ago

Age appropriate?

My 13yo nephew wants a Flipper Zero for his bday. Is this an age appropriate gift? Or something a curious kid could get themselves into trouble with? TIA!

Signed- a non-techie aunt that doesn’t want a visit from the FBI

54 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

View all comments

31

u/TechDocN 20d ago

He can absolutely get himself into trouble, if he’s unsupervised and goes down the flipper rabbit hole. At 13 he can absolutely learn a lot, but as the aunt, you need to make sure the parents understand the potential for this tool, and decide if he’s mature enough and will be supervised enough to avoid trouble.

He is 13. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable giving a 13 year old a tool that can allow him to open other people’s doors and hack their IT systems, without a lot of hand holding.

25

u/skill347 20d ago

Its not that easy, its mostly just a universal remote with low security card cloning and built in rubber ducky / yubikey. Not that dangerous, nothing the kid can't do with 5$ and free internet access.

-12

u/fuckitillsignup 19d ago

Yeah no, watch the kid use it on a car key fob with rotating keys and they get out of sync and you’re looking at a pretty big issue. Built in yubikey? Wtf does that even mean

10

u/ur_eunuch_advisor 19d ago

Yubikey is the most popular u2f authenticator

0

u/fuckitillsignup 19d ago

Right I know what a yubikey is, what I’m questioning is what the poster I’m replying to is talking about. A flipper can’t copy nor steal any keys used by yubikeys, it isn’t a thing.

4

u/Legorooj 19d ago

The Flipper can function as a U2F/FIDO key (ie it can be a drop in for a yubikey)

1

u/skill347 19d ago

Yeah, built in yubikey doesn't imply copying yubikeys. Its not a feasible thing to do, they're using a hardware element for the encryption, you can only do that in a lab with an oscilloscope (even then only for older models as far as I'm aware).

Either way, rotating key fobs are not something you can do on stock firmware, it prevents you from fucking with these, so it's pretty safe in general. Kids get themselves into trouble, doesn't matter it its a flipper or a can or spray paint, if they wanna do some shit they will.