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Spammed by Bluetooth
An Anonymous Reader writes "BBC News is reporting a new craze - using Bluetooth to send unsolicited messages. Apparently lots of phone owners are leaving Bluetooth switched on, meaning that anyone within range can send a short message. The phenomenon is known as "bluejacking". It's not clear at present that this is being done by anyone other than pranksters, but one can't help wondering, how long before commercial spammers catch on."
Heh. I had a long layover in Amsterdam last month and had hours of gleeful fun sending "boe" notes over bluetooth to all the other bluetooth phones I could see while drinking Heineken at the KLM Crown Lounge.
I've used this feature also to send quick notes to cow-orkers at the office when they were on the phone or we were busy in a meeting. It's handy and saves the absurd ten cent charge applied to an outbound SMS.
It's only a matter of time before it's rendered useless due to spam, I'm sure.
because of the short range of bluetooth i think it'll be difficult to use this as commercial spamming. :)
or maybe we are going to see people wearing jacket or backpack hiding bt equipment in crowded area?
I can see it now, Mom and Pop stores could have messages sent to your device as you walk past or near their entrance
Every bluetooth phone I've ever owned has required a PIN to be set when you activate it. Without the PIN you can't make a connection.
Then, when connection does succeed, a box pops up on the receiving phone asking whether you want to accept the connection.
It's difficult to see how that could be done without the owner knowing about it.
Well, if they're in range, it shouldn't be hard to find someone engaging in commercial "bluejacking", so we can beat the crap out of them in front of everyone.
Or is it the removal of testicles that we're out for? I can never remember what the punishment for spamming is...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As bluetooth operates in the same 2.4 GHz band as WiFi, I'd bet some people are hooking up Bluetooth devices to cantennas for greater bluejacking range.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
While I'm sure this could become a major problem in the future if it reaches critical mass, the beauty of Bluetooth is that it's designed for personal area networks. So, although it's bluetooth spam, it shouldn't reach anyone farther than 30 feet away from you or so. This by itself will make bluetooth spam a little harder to operate than just SMS or email spam.
:)
Unless, of course, Microsoft makes a smartphone that has Outlook on it and bluetooth as an option...
...is that it is fairly short range, so when you identify the spammer you can go punch them.
Bluetooth-enabled devices must include an easy hardware switch which allows the convenient shutting off of Bluetooth functionality. An indicator light displaying the current status must also be included on the device. Devices like the Tapwave Zodiac are well designed and include these features.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
they're sending an address book entry, with the message they wish to send as the "name" of the contact.
Because the best security method is security via obscurity. It's been proven time after time.
(Sorry to post the obvious in response to a flamebait... someone's gotta do it, do I deserve the mod downs that may follow? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What might be more interesting is bluetooth viruses. We're probably fairly safe since we dont have a monoculture in mobile phones like that which exists on the desktop, but you can just imagine bluetooth viruses hopping from phone to phone as their owner travels around :-). Plus the fact that its very difficult to update phones to fix holes could make this a pretty big problem if such security holes were found.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
New reporting style
Make it sound like a haiku
People think it's cool
We've been doing this for ages in the UK. See here for Andy's way of doing it ;)
Smegma.
I doubt there would be spam like we have now on email, the range is simply to short. But I can see supermarkets or similar companys using this to send you messages while in there store.
Annoying sure, but at least semi-relevant to what your doing. And at least you can turn it off. (You can, can't you?)
When the Sony Ericcson's came out with bluetooth they made them come with the bluetooth turned off by default. When Nokia came out with their bluetooth phones they had them ship with it on by default. Soon on the Sony Ericson message boards people found they could discover the nokia's in a crowded place (movie theaters, etc.) and you could create a contact in you contact list and then send them that contact. This has the benifit that you message is actually the contact name which the person on the recieving end will actually see first so they don't have to click OK and then get the message...it's already there. Anyhow, it's much better in Europe for this type of thing as they've had GSM phone and associated cool features such as bluetooth for quite some time while America is just starting to catch on. I've done discoveries with mine and never had any success connecting or seeing any other bluetooth activated phone that wasn't purposly turned on for the connection. I wonder if Nokia has caught on and is leaving bluetooth off on their America bound phones.
Everybody is talking about how the damage will be limited because bluetooth has such a short range, but what happens if the spammers boost the power of their transmittors? Is this possible with Bluetooth (I admit I don't know)? If so, we may be in for more problems then the first few posts let on.
Sure, it may be illegal/immoral, but can we trust spammers to be legal and moral?
On another note how long until this is used to SPAM products designed to defeat this type of SPAM (ala Windows Messenger Service)?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'd read Slashdot. I'll bet they get all kinds of great ideas from us! :)
You could easily create a small battery powered embedded device running Linux that would just send out bluetooth messages. Drop that on a city bus or subway car and you could spam a ton of people really easily.
;)
Perhaps I should be patenting an idea like that.
I understand that some bluetooth phones are used to connect your PDA or laptop to the Internet.
Is it possible to place a laptop next to a phone, somehow hijack the connection, get the IP address, send 1000 spam messages and disconnect?
Should not take more than 30-50 seconds.
*all* bluejacking is: turning on your bluetooth and scanning for nearby devices who's idiot owners haven't turned "discoverable" off. that's what "discoverable" means: your phone can be discovered and messaged. Nokia ships with this on by default.
it's not some cool hack, or anything, it's just a setting within bluetooth for exchanging information without pairing.
My phone has a blue LED that indicates, yes, you guessed it, that I'm using bluetooth. It *doesn't* mean I've been dumb enough not to realise that if you don't put a tick in the "discoverable" box that you can get short range messages from strangers.
Blue tooth is a remarkably secure system requiring PIN numbers and autentication to do any form of connection.
:O
WHat is actually happening here is the OBEX transfer part is beign utilised. Any Bluetooth phone that is set to discoverable will accept certain OBEX information (usually just vCards, and vCal files, and maybe notes). The phone ideally will accept the information and ask the user if he/she woudl liek the add the recieved infomation into their phonebook/calendar/notes. it is EXACTLY like the beam facility of Palm units, and others, just using Bluetooth for non-line of sight transfers.
What people do in "BlueJacking" is create a dummy addressbook entry, and send it to the unsuspecting user (usually Nokia users.. more on that later). I did it beofre once, when i was at a resteraunt and this idiot with a Nokia camera phoen was showing off and making a nuisence in front of some girls he was entertaining. So i sent a address "vCard" with the name "Stop Playing with yr BRICK" from my phone to his (his phone was discovered as "poser"?!!?!??!?!) SHoudl haev seen the look on his face.. especially in front of the girls..
However (unless you are a Nokia 7650/6310i/6xxx user) You have nothign to worry. Most phoens ship with bluetooth off or in none discoverable mode. The SOny Ericssons only stay "discoverable" for a maximum of three minuites. The blueJackign craze started in the (Sony)Ericsson community when it was discovered some (if not most) Nokia Bluetooth phones were shipped default with Bluetooth on and discoverable, so it was a prank to those users!
As was pointed out, it is extremely easy to make a phoen none discoverable, and most ppl have cottoned on.
So as for "spam" via blue tooh, it isnt going to happen, unless you are EXTREMELY stupid... then again..... there is a hell of a lot of stupid people
Have a nice day!
A friend of mine uses Bluetooth in this way to distribute his freeware Symbian games such as Vexed to other Symbian phones.
Watch out for a manic Scotsman on the London tube system waving a Nokia 7650...
You are right and the grand-parent post is wrong. A directional antenna is bidirectional -- it both directs power to toward the distant reciever and amplifies power from a distant transmitter. If this was not true, then cantennas would not work for Wifi because Wifi, like bluetooth, requires bidirectional communications.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Meet brutus, he's the bluetooth honeypot. When someone sends a message he doesn't like he pummels everyone within 15 feet.
At least in Copenhagen this phenomenon is quite common. It seems, every other time I get in a taxi I get a bluetooth transmitted business card from the company or sometimes specifically the driver of the taxi. The first time this happened it was a slightly novel new thing I didn't mind much - but now I find myself cursing the people who implemented this standard for not doing it like on Palm where you have to 'accept' the infrared beamed cards. On the Nokia cellphones it's just stored without question so if this practice gets more widespread, soon your address book will be seriously burdened with unwanted business cards. Just finding them will be a big hassle. That's when you switch off bluetooth I guess.
What's to stop an advertising company from installing a little box in Times Square or any other heavy traffic and then selling message time on it? What are you going to do, punch the box?
When I'm bored I'll change my iPaq 5450 BlueTooth device identification to ABigHairyDick and then look for phones.
Great fun when someone's phone beeps, and on the screen they see "Accept connection from ABigHairyDick?"
Puzzeled frowns usually result although after this article I'm sure to get my smirking ass beat good.
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