Ryan Walker's Blackpants Turn the Flipper Blackhat Board Into a Standalone Linux Terminal

Maker Ryan Walker, of Rootkit Labs, has released design files for a compact low-power handheld Linux-based system dubbed the Blackhat with Blackpants — built for on-the-go security analysis and penetration testing of Wi-Fi networks.

"I designed a fully open-source, Linux-enabled cyberdeck built specifically for ethical hacking," Walker explains of the project. "The module that slides into the back is also my own design. It originally started as a [Flipper Devices] Flipper Zero add-on board called the Flipper Blackhat, but I got tired of everyone asking what the Flipper was for. So now, if you don’t want the Flipper integration, you can simply buy the Blackpants module instead."

The heart of the build is, as Walker says, the Flipper Blackhat, an add-on accessory for Flipper Devices' Flipper Zero electronics multitool launched back in March this year. Unlike similar add-ons that simply connect the Flipper Zero to a Wi-Fi microcontroller to expand its capabilities, the Flipper Blackhat is effectively a self-contained single-board computer — relegating the Flipper Zero itself to an input/output terminal.

At the time, Walker teased plans for a standalone variant "with a Blackberry style keypad," which became the Blacpkants itself — a dock for an otherwise-unmodified Flipper Blackhat that replaces the Flipper Zero and offers a larger, higher-resolution square-format display and a full if compact QWERTY-layout keyboard.

The core specifications are unchanged since the Blackhat Flipper's launch: an Allwinner A33 system-on-chip provides four Arm Cortex-A7 cores running at up to 1.8GHz and an Arm Mali-400MP2 graphics processor, while a Realtek RTL8723DS chip adds 2.4GHz single-band Wi-Fi connectivity. A pair of USB Type-A ports provide further expansion, with a bundled Realtek RTL8821CU Wi-Fi expanding the board's Wi-Fi support to the 5GHz band and the second left empty for a radio or other dongle of the user's choice.

Walker has listed the Blackpants on the Rootkit Labs store, but at the time of writing did not ship to the US; design files have been released on GitHub under the permissive MIT license, with the Flipper Blackhat board's files in a separate repository. Additional information is available in Walker's Reddit post.