Minino Is a Kitty-Shaped Multi-Protocol IoT Cybersecurity Device Available in Time for DEF CON 32

Electronic Cats and PWNLab MX have unveiled their latest cybersecurity tool — just in time for DEF CON 32. The Minino is a multi-protocol and multi-band device for sniffing 2.4GHz communications and probing Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The ESP32-C6-driven Minino is versatile and incredibly cute with its kitty-shaped printed circuit board.

Minino lets you interact with five IoT technologies: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi 6, Zigbee, Thread, and Matter. Its dedicated GNSS radio further enhances its capabilities by allowing Minino to receive signals from GPS, QZZ, Beidou, Galileo, and GLONASS satellite constellations.

The circuit board does not have any onboard or chip antennas; instead, the GPS radio and the ESP32 module both have u.FL connectors for external antennas. Even though the antennas come out behind the Cat PCB's ears, they resemble a Cat's whiskers. Meanwhile, the board's front side has four push buttons and a 128x64-pixel OLED screen for a user interface. Minino is powered by three AAA battery cells, making it suitable as a badge (add-on) for a conference.

You might recognize Electronic Cats from their IoT tool, CatSniffer. That device focused on sub-1 GHz signals but it has a robust toolset for analyzing packets. Minino is compatible with the same analysis tools as CatSniffer and supports the widely used Wireshark software. A microSD card socket also enables you to log packet captures as pcap files for detailed (offline) analysis.

Electronic Cats and PWNLab MX have open-sourced the Minino so that you can download the design files from this GitHub repository. You can also buy one from Electronic Cats. Currently, Minino is available with a 30% pre-order discount, or $35. If you are attending DEF CON 32 (Thursday, August 8th to Sunday, August 11th), you can elect to pick it up directly from Electronic Cats at the conference.