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Nokia Admits Multiple Bluetooth Security Holes
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has admitted that four of its handsets (6310, 6310i, 8910 and 8910i) have multiple security vulnerabilities that can allow an attacker to read, edit and copy the contacts and calendar entries using Bluetooth. This admission comes after a ZDNet UK article published earlier today. the spokesperson advises customers to switch off Bluetooth in public places!" For more information, see the bluesnarfing site pointed out by reader profet.
Great, not a single Mac OS X app can correctly address my 6310i, but Joe Random Hacker can? Urgh. I need to get my priorities straight.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
What's happening with Bluetooth happened with wireless networks.
What happened with wireless networks happened with anonymous ftp servers.
What happened with anon ftp servers happened with telnet access (you remember the "guest" login provided by most hosts ?).
Every time a new technology is used there are some flaws with it. No big deal.
a fresh list of emai^H^H^H^H telephone numbers so you can send your email marketing to?
Keep It Simple Stupid. Phones are tools. We don't "need" them to be fully featured akin a full OS. Today we have Bluetooth hole sin a few phones. What's next tomorrow on MSFT Smart Phones? Hackers turning in using your line to call 0900 numbers? People hacking your e-wallet? When it comes to commodity devices we should make sure they do reliably and securely work. I don't expect anything less.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Is Bluetooth upgradeable and How?
most people would probably be better off without the wheel.. but try telling them..
Bluejacking is just where you send a contact to available phones, and it just used to startle people. This is nothing to do with bluesnarfing which is the hacking/changing data!
These days we have all possible material about encryption available publicly. We have RSA, we have digital signatures, we have freely available software which can create perfectly encrypted material which would give bad headaches to the NSA if they had to crack it, even I can encode anything with gpg.
Yet, a mobile-phone giant does this. Are they just plain stupid, or is this another example of the wonders of social science? I can't help thinking how intelligent an ant nest can be though ants singularly are so stupid, and how an organization with some of the brightest engineers on the planet can act so carelessly.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
when things aren't built from the ground up with security in mind, there is likely to be some compromise for the sake of ease of use, when security issues come to mind. apart from the fact that any form of wireless communication is prone to be insecure! think about it.. ARGH THE GOVERNMENT IS LISTENING TO MY PHONE CALLS!!
tim
According to this article (in Finnish) Sony Ericsson is going to give a statement on Tuesday. Possible vulnerable SE models include R520m, T68i, T610 and Z1010.
If you turn Bluetooth off, your're invulnerable and your batteries will last longer.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Bluetooth was built from the ground up with security in mind, obviously Nokia totally boggled this.
--- I do not moderate.
I can't believe this, a company as big as Nokia making mistake as stupid as this ?
I thought most people would have learned something on the WiFi fiasco by now, especially Nokia (who also make security products such as firewalls by the way)
Now let's see if they're dedicated enough to their customers to fix this problem quickly.
In the meantime, it's good idea to keep this on the headlines of the media.
On another note, I'd be interested about other bluetooth-enabled devices - handsfree headset ? iPAQs? Palm? Sony Clies?
Some companies already do, I'd imagine, but surely the solution would be to employ - and pay decently - people who've highlighted vulnerabilities in previous products/systems to go at phones/etc like the clappers, trying to find any vulnerabilities. Granted, few products are going to be 100% secure but surely it'd be better than holes like this cropping up.
The ad I got on the page with that article...
Advertising nokia as a business mobility solution. Want to keep your business contacts a secret?
Except that Nokia have built Bluetooth support only into a limited number of phones, mainly those aimed at the "business market". For instance, my 6800 has almost every conceivable option but no Bluetooth.
I can't guess their reasons for not including Bluetooth with all their more expensive models, since it can't cost more than one Euro or so, but at least it means that of all the phones out there, relatively few are exploitable.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Who'd want to hack an N-Gage?
You have to turn off bluetooth functionability to be safe..
Nokia is vunerabile to both having the device detect on and off in the hacks..
according to the bleustumbler.org site..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Nokia is not the only phone maker with broken or stupid bluetooth implementations. Just look at the Siemens S55 which by default (when bluetooth is on) accpets any kind of files and saves them to your phones inbox. Also it has several bugs, like the Nokia. I'm have setup a small website (http://www.betaversion.net/btdsd/) with a currently very small list of bluetooth capable phones with there security settings and bugs. I tell you bluetooth will be real fun in the future :-)
I have my phone (non-Nokia) on discoverable all the time for convenience. I run Mac OS X, and use the Address Book application to send SMS messages via the phone. I also have iSync configured to automatically sync my address book once a day when the phone is in the vicinity of the Mac. I don't notice a major drain on the battery with Bluetooth kept on. Having to disable it every time I went outside would be very annoying.
Interestingly from what I have read about the security vulnerabilities with the *five* models affected by this (Nokia 6310, 6310i, 8910, 8910i and 7650), Nokia has confirmed only that the 7650 has the problem. Also reported that some SonyEricsson phones would have similar vulnerabilities, but it was not stated which models. So, I take it that at least these five Nokia phones have the Bluetooth holes. But what is interesting is that different news-feeds report Nokia confirming/denying different models! What this really tells us that the writers of the news themselves are either: 1) Too lazy to look it up from Nokia itself. 2) Too naive to take some other newsfeeds info as a fact. 3) Too inexperienced to check the validity of the info. 4) Too ??? to ??? So, who made the mistake? ALL the "reporters" who did not check the validity of the news by themselves straight from the source.
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
Doesn't seem smart to me. Admit there is a vulnerability then say you aren't going to fix it. I'm surprised they didn't say the "fix" would be released in the next versions of the affected phones and customers would need to upgrade following their easy and costly upgrade path.
Of course a bulk enterprise license would cover any future upgrades but you would still have to buy a license for each phone call you make with the new phone.
I'm not a karma whore but I play one on Slashdot
I think I hava 6310 from the first batch. Never bothered to flash it because I rarely use it.
This one does not have the vulnerability. You see, if you switch bluetooth on, the whole phone crashes immediately.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Well, I guess it was worth those 48 hours of carefree wireless toying...
Have Linux installed at your place in Amsterdam, for cheap
You only need to be discoverable when you are pairing. After that you can keep bluetooth on and it is _supposed_ to only talk to those devices you know about.
That's why my home LAN is wired -- so I at least know if anyone is tapping me, then they must be on the inside.
This isn't true -- you can pick up (copper) LAN signals from a reasonable distance, which is why the military always uses fiber outside of shielded environments. At least when sensitive data is expected to travel along the pipes.
The most obvious way to test this is to place an ordinary FM radio antenna along the network wire and see how much junk you are picking up; you can clearly hear the intensity of the network traffic.
I heard this traffic when sitting in my car in the company parking lot at one of my previous jobs and so knew when the builds were done.
Granted, the equipment is fairly expensive, but don't think for a second that you're safe because you're wired. Wires leak like hell.
If nothing has changed since AL Digital released the it on bugtraq, then the most serious issues only affect phones that have previously been paired with the attacking Bluetooth device.
This means that you have to have given the attacker access to privileged services at one point in time, and then deleted him.
If you had not deleted him, he would obviously still have access.
But it is the missing deletion that is the problem.
You should not pair your device with any devices except your own. Your PDA requires to be paired with your Phone, Laptop, and access point, so it can dial up, synch, and have LAN access etc. But you don't have to pair it to send your business card to somebody else. There is no reason to pair with Joe Hackers device. So for most of the cases described by AL Digital it is just a bad implementation which does not affect the majority of users.
For the rest of the cases it is also a bad implementation by Nokia and "possibly other manufacturers", it is not a vulnerability in the protocol.
Well that is just about all of the bluetooth phones out there then?
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
PhoneManager claims it can transfer contacts to/from a 6310i using bluetooth. It doesn't work without a cable for my non-i 6310 so I haven't tested it.
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