Medusa

MedusaThe gorgon listens.

ESP32-S3 inside a phone case — paired with your phone for the UI. A defensive research tool for auditing the radio surface of the networks you own. From HARTLE.TECH.

Get started
GitHub
Medusa mascot — gorgon head with snake-hair antennas
🐍

Passive RF reconnaissance

802.11 monitor mode + BLE 5 scanning. See what your devices are actually broadcasting — probe requests, beacon payloads, BLE advertisements, ESP-NOW chatter.

🔍

Audit your own posture

Built for security researchers and network operators auditing their own infrastructure. Confirm PMF is on; spot rogue devices; understand what your phone leaks before you take it somewhere it matters.

📱

Phone-as-UI

The responsive local web app is available now. Bonded native phone and watch companions remain design targets, not shipped applications.

🛡

Passive-first by default

Discovery and local readback are the default surface. Active-transmission research remains disabled and cannot become a release capability until firmware-enforced scope, rate, duration, audit, confirmation, and stop controls exist.

🪶

Pocketable target

ESP32-S3-WROOM-1, slim lipo, and USB-C passthrough remain the case-design direction. Final weight, power budget, and bill of materials still need physical validation.

📜

Open source, lawful only

Apache 2.0 source with a clear lawful-use and support position in NOTICE. HARTLE.TECH does not document offensive utility against networks you do not own or have authorization to test.

⚠️ Lawful-use anchor. Medusa is published for security researchers, network operators auditing their own infrastructure, educators, and CTF participants. Do not use it against networks or devices you do not own, administer, or have written authorization to test. NOTICE records the project's intended use and support scope; see Lawful use for details.

Status ​

🚧 Research prototype. The responsive local web control surface and several firmware research paths exist. The current v3 passive unattended logger compiles for ESP32-C3 and ESP32-S3 and is host-tested; an earlier build booted fail-closed on a C3 with uninitialized storage. Exact-v3 boot, physical capture, storage initialization, power-cycle persistence, USB readback, case integration, and native companions remain separate proof gates. The project board tracks progress.

Sibling projects ​

Medusa is the MCU branch of the HARTLE.TECH phone-as-UI hacking-case-kit vision.

  • Nosferato — single-board-computer lane (Pi Zero 2 W). Bigger, more capable, less pocketable.
  • NearTrace — Android BLE-scanner sibling and companion-pattern reference; it is not yet a shipped Medusa companion.
  • DumpSock — sibling tool in the HARTLE.TECH portfolio (cloudless iPhone backup). Same brand house style, different mission.

Contact ​

contact@hartle.tech · HARTLE.TECH (NIPC 518241327, Porto, Portugal)