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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
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
I had the firmware upgraded on my 6310i to resolve some bluetooth connection issues, and I imagine the whole stack is upgradeable in this manner.
I don't think the bluetooth protocol is broken - just the implementation.
Bluetooth was built from the ground up with security in mind, obviously Nokia totally boggled this.
--- I do not moderate.
This is exactly the reason why its such a big issue.
As an consumer, if you have a bluetooth phone all you are likely to have is the phone number of your friends.
As a geek, you are more than likely to have a PDA for keeping anything more detailed/sensitive.
Business users, executives etc. are more likely to use the advanced functions of there phones and therefore it is they that are most at risk to losing sensitive data.
So, whilst most models dont have bluetooth, the ones that do are the ones that are liekly to have the most valuable information.
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 :-)
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...
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
I can. The mobile phone manufactures in general and Nokia in particular is very much focused on time-to-market. That means that their phones are not always finished when they hit the shelves. To be fair, neither was my Ericsson R520m phone when I first got it.
My opinion? See above.
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.