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'BlueBag' PC Sniffs Out Bluetooth Flaws
An anonymous reader writes "Why isn't Bluetooth set to "hidden" in all of Nokia's phones? Some hackers in Italy stuffed a computer with a bunch of Bluetooth dongles in a suitcase to see how many Bluetooth devices they could discover by wandering around airports, train stations and shopping malls. The answer? More than 1,400 in 23 hours." The team will present their findings at BlackHat later this summer.
Ohh...none?!
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
even more of a problem is the noise my computer makes whenever someone with a bluetooth devices walks past my desk. try debugging a multi-threaded app with your computer constantly making random noises!!
While it is a fun experiment, it is really not news at all.
I have to make a 5 1/2 hours trip by train about twice a month, and for a while one of my ways to waste some time was bugging people who have bluetooth enabled phones...
My 'toolset' ?
A Palm m505 equipped with a bluetooth sdcard.
Typically, just walking through the train from one end to another would get me some tens of phones and a laptop here and there.
Often you can't pair with devices you find, but many of them don't really require pairing for getting data from them, and besides, pairing requests allow for sending text messages, and a 'yes' is an instinctive reply whenever people get bugged by popups.. also on a phone.. Even if that doesn't work, you can still bug people and even make use of their phone difficult... (great when you can find the phone of that extremely loudly talking person)
This was some 3 years ago, and it was well documented back then already.
I can use my laptop and find out the location of each and every single strategic installations in the world. That surely does not allow me to log in to or enter any of them and cause mischief. Just because they were able to 'see' bluetooth device is not a security risk - It becomes serious only if they were able to pair to any of them,with or without a passcode. But I remember P.Hilton or somebody getting plastered all over the net with pics hacked from her cell using bluetooth. Just can't find the link.
From TFA:
Using Bluetooth is "like sex," Zanero said. "It's better with precautions."
Anyone care to come up with a joke about getting a trojan and wearing a trojan?
"You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just becuase some watery tart threw a sword at you!"
It's an issue I'm sure that a lot of Nokia phone owners aren't aware of. I didn't realize that my phone's Bluetooth settings were set that way until I read the blurb and checked. I turned it off and changed it to hidden (just in case I ever want to reactivate it later).
I don't exactly have anything important in my phone, but given the existance of Bluetooth exploits, I'd rather not leave the ports open as it were.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Does it really matter how many devices with Bluetooth on they found? I always keep mine on, so that I don't have to turn it off and on when I am leaving/getting home to use such nifty tools as Salling Clicker in OS X (available for Windows too)
I can discover even more frontdoors in the same period of time.
But how many are open so I can walk in ???
These guys plugged several bluetooth peripherals into a laptop.
Sorry, but this is a technology site.
I heard they found him bny pairing with his bluetooth phone.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
Wandering about airports, train stations and shopping malls, I routinely "discover" hundreds of babes, but "pairing", alas, is a different matter altogether.
Many comments say "Ok, so they discovered a lot of phones, that doesn't mean they could hack into each one of them", which is true and also acknowledged by the researchers (hence the use of the word "potential" in TFA). I, for one, turn my bluetooth on only when I need to synch it with my laptop. I don't even use a "bionic man bluetooth headset" because I find these ridiculous.
However, I'd like to know what are the dangers when leaving the Bluetooth enabled on my cell phone. I set it up to require an code to bond. But that doesn't mean I'm safe, I guess. Are there any known exploits, widely used, or easy to setup, for hacking Bluetooth phones? Especially Sony-Ericsson and HP iPaq, since these are the ones I use.
I guess the whole point of this experiment was testing the viability of someone taking a BT enabled device around crowded places and attempting to virus-infect as many people's phones, PDAs, and laptops as possible with it.
But that scenario strikes me as relatively pointless.
The main risk BT enabled device owners are worried about is data theft. (EG. You don't want random people downloading your photo library off your cellphone, or capturing all of your contact list data.) This would require them taking specific steps to target your specific device, and those steps would have to be taken while they're within the 30 foot or so range of you!
Some guy rolling a suitcase through an airport and saying "Ooh! Look at these logs showing all the people I could potentially hack!" means little, if he can't chase individual people down from those logs afterwards and pull down their data.
A "Dongle" is a hardware license. that is, an adapter/ chip that plugs into a PC/ Server/ Whatever that verifies a license
Yes, that is one definition. However, the PCMCIA and CardBus network adapters (used way-back-when before laptops had built-in Ethernet) would often consist of two parts: the card itself that was inserted into the slot; and the dongle, which connected the card to the RJ-45. I have a handful of those NICs sitting around: D-Link, 3Com, and Xircom all made them, although in Xircom's case I don't remember if the dongle pre- or post-dated the X-Jack.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Where can I get a laptop with a 23hour battery?!!!
So your suggesting that security professionals will never experiment?
If I were trying to keep an edge in the mobile anti-virus market, one of the first thing I'd do would be to get out there and gather as much information as possible, work out some statistics, most popular models etc.
You must work at one of these new-fangled IP firms with zero R&D budget!
It's called BlueJacking and has being going on for a few years. Sometimes I try it in cafes - you end up trying to guess the name of the pretty girl in the corner from your list of possibles.
In fact I'm all in favour of social networking software built into phones - something like a local myspace that you carry with you. Would be great at parties if your phone said, "You should really talk to this person - I'll put an intro in for you if you want".
Or maybe I'm being a bit sad.
http://www.funsms.net/blue_jacking.htm
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Anyone can collect information about bluetooth devices on the go, and with simple Tooting action you could try to force the user install malicious software on his device. But whats the point of all this ?? In the end you gain not much, except for maybe a list of personal contacts which you can use for complete psychopate experiences. You dont need an array of devices to see if a certain exploid is working, just get your hands on the device implementation docs or just start cracking your own device ;).
On an average train journey I discover 10/15 Bluetooth enabled devices on my Mobile.
Using the same Mobile, I also discover 200/240 WiFi Access-Points with zero encryption if I travel by car.
The latter at least gains enough connectivity to browse 'Slashdot'.
Trying each door to see if a car is locked, is pointless unless your trying to steal it.
A firm carried out similar research way back in 2004, so to skip ahead and see what the findings were, check here Nick
Max Moser and some of the guys at remote-exploit have a few great tools and collections for wireless sniffing (all types, including bluetooth) such as the Auditor Collection.
Just a blatant plug for a friend, check it out. I think it's pretty cool.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Umm, feel free to say no to this but... would you mind shaving my blue bag?
If you walk around the countryside at night, you'll see hundreds of stars, but you cannot travel to them.
If you walk around the neighborhood, you'll see many houses, you probably do not own them.
If you walk around the forest, you'll see many trees, but you can't turn the trees into wooden furniture as you're walking.
Why would they need "a bunch" of bluetooth dongles? TFA seems to imply they only had one bluetooth device in the bag.
You are broadcasting your IP address! Click here to repair.
Is anyone else mildly amused that this article is about something called 'Bluebag' and a "bunch of Dongles"? :-P
-JWR
The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a Bluetooth Dongle unless it is a device which authenticates a software license and happens to connect via Bluetooth rather than a physical link (definition 1), or it hangs off the PC in the fashion of a Dongle (definition 2.)
Note that I do not cite the Wiki as an authority on the English language, but merely to show that the Wiki gets it right already, as hard copy dictionaries will certainly take a while to catch up.
The bottom line is you have a choice between two options:
- 1) "It has been quite a while since plugged my Bluetooth PCMCIA Card into my laptop
..." - 2) "Yo dog
... I ain't plugged my Bluetooth Dongle into my boxen in a minute ..."
Only you can decide if you want to sound like an educated technology expert or a gangsta moronGuns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yes, of course you can - but how many bluetooth enabled devices include antenna jacks suitable for attaching one of these to them?
They only became well-known with wi-fi because so many wireless routers and cards had jacks on them for external antennas. Bluetooth generally has no such thing.
+1 to Funny, for timely and, well... funny.
VOTE!
I reported to RISKS last April last year:
Thieves were using bluetooth to target cars that have suspended laptops left
unattended in parking lots, in my case Disney World parking.
It makes for guaranteed payoffs. If the Nokia phones are bluetooth visible
while left in the car there's another easy target.
- AndrewN