Build Your Own Bluetooth Sniper Rifle

Jim Buzbee writes "I don't think I'd do it, but these guys built a Bluetooth Sniper rifle, went to the roof of a downtown Los Angles skyscraper and pointed it at nearby buildings. See what they found, and if you're so inclined, they'll show how to build your own and maybe, just maybe, you too can snag Paris Hilton's address book." (Which was not snagged via Bluetooth snooping, as the article points out.) This version looks a bit more polished than the one mentioned last August.

Comments

Frightening, ?

[fembots]

After the DC Sniper incident, this gave me a fright as I thought someone has built a bluetooth-guided sniper rifle, which indicates when your bullet is aligned perfectly with your target's bluetooh tag, and those who auto-accept Bluetooth pairing are in trouble.

Seriously though, I wonder how many people do auto-accept BT connections? My PDA only accepts known pairs, so you need to physically talk to me to pair you up for the first time.

The friendly article seems to mentioned the "success" in BT detection, but didn't go in details of successful connection. It's like car thieves claim to detect 20,000 cars in the city centre, but didn't say how many were unlocked.

Why make it look like a rifle?

[Mal-2]

If they had made this look like a telescope rather than a weapon, and mounted it on a tripod, they could have pointed it just about anywhere they wanted and nobody would have paid a whole lot of attention to them. The rifle-like appearance only served to make the device look much more dangerous than it was.

There are times when the form factor of a rifle makes perfect sense (rifle stocks for cameras, for example), but many others where it just DOESN'T. This is one of the latter group.

Mal-2