Bluetooth Hacking

So in this episode, we're going to put on our hacker hats.

We're going to talk about like, what can you actually do with some of these vulnerabilities? And before we jump into the details here, Are there some situations where we've actually seen widespread Bluetooth hacking or any big incidents we know of aside from people being jerks at DEF CON and BLE spamming people or rebooting iPhones?

Yeah, I think it's mostly been the nuisance things that, like you alluded to, we talked about last time about Bluetooth spam, where you can send out these messages that cause pop-ups that are an annoyance.

That was easy.

Back in the day, similar things with pushing your contact information and whatnot.

But I haven't seen too much about these actually being used.

I mean, the impact of some of these is pretty serious.

If you get control of the keyboard, you can do keystroke injunction.

That can be bad.

If you get control of headphones, you can maybe listen in using the microphone.

That could be compromising.

But you just don't see it as much in the news about these actually being implemented widespread and used.

Yeah.

Have you seen anything that you remember?

I haven't really.

It would be interesting to talk to some pen testers.

I think when we get into the logistics of Bluetooth hacking, I think that explains some of the reason why.

I remember when the, I think it was Armist that announced seven Bluetooth vulnerabilities altogether, the BlueBorne vulnerabilities altogether.

And the headline was like, billions of devices vulnerable.

But yeah, it's not like these firewalls on the internet that have a vulnerability or SSL VPNs or something like that, where every attacker in the world has access to them because everyone's connected to the internet.

Bluetooth, you need proximity.

Right? Yeah.

Generally

you have to be pretty close in order to interact with that device.

Another thing that occurred to me is that for my own specific examples, I have some really old Bluetooth devices.

So in this episode, we're going to put on our hacker hats.

We're going to talk about like, what can you actually do with some of these vulnerabilities? And before we jump into the details here, Are there some situations where we've actually seen widespread Bluetooth hacking or any big incidents we know of aside from people being jerks at DEF CON and BLE spamming people or rebooting iPhones?

Yeah, I think it's mostly been the nuisance things that, like you alluded to, we talked about last time about Bluetooth spam, where you can send out these messages that cause pop-ups that are an annoyance.

That was easy.

Back in the day, similar things with pushing your contact information and whatnot.

But I haven't seen too much about these actually being used.

I mean, the impact of some of these is pretty serious.

If you get control of the keyboard, you can do keystroke injunction.

That can be bad.

If you get control of headphones, you can maybe listen in using the microphone.

That could be compromising.

But you just don't see it as much in the news about these actually being implemented widespread and used.

Yeah.

Have you seen anything that you remember?

I haven't really.

It would be interesting to talk to some pen testers.

I think when we get into the logistics of Bluetooth hacking, I think that explains some of the reason why.

I remember when the, I think it was Armist that announced seven Bluetooth vulnerabilities altogether, the BlueBorne vulnerabilities altogether.

And the headline was like, billions of devices vulnerable.

But yeah, it's not like these firewalls on the internet that have a vulnerability or SSL VPNs or something like that, where every attacker in the world has access to them because everyone's connected to the internet.

Bluetooth, you need proximity.

Right? Yeah.

Generally

you have to be pretty close in order to interact with that device.

Another thing that occurred to me is that for my own specific examples, I have some really old Bluetooth devices.