'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.

Comments

Discovery is not pairing

[wish bot]

That's great, but how many could they actually pair with?

Ohh...none?!

Re:NOT a dongle!

[mjh]

The problem is that language doesn't work that way. All of us, as a group, are in control of language. Words that were intended for one context frequently apply to all kinds of other contexts. And people gravitate towards analogies. So the "dongle" that you speak of, works very well as an analogy for a bluetooth peripheral. Pretty soon, "dongle" means any sort of thing you plug into a PC that sticks out the end.

It is very difficult to keep people from using words the way that they want to. This is the motivation behind trademark laws. Once the mass decides that a word (e.g. kleenex or xerox) means something more than the specific original intention, the game is up. I believe that dongle has passed that threshold.

So you can continue, in a Quixote-esque manner, to try and steer people back to the single specific meaning of dongle. But I don't think you'll succeed. And I think you're likely to get very frustrated. But if that's what you want to do, have at it!