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Bluetooth Gains Direct Internet Access, Security Enhancements
jfruh writes: The Bluetooth spec never quite became the worldbeater it was billed as, but it's aiming to become indispensible to the Internet of Things. Updates to the spec make it possible for low-powered Bluetooth devices to gain direct access to the Internet, and, perhaps more importantly, make those devices a lot harder to hack.
> The Bluetooth spec never quite became the worldbeater it was billed as, but it's aiming to become indispensible to the Internet of Things. Updates to the spec >make it possible for low-powered Bluetooth devices to gain direct access to the Internet, and, perhaps more importantly, make those devices a lot harder to hack.
How does being connected to the internet make a device harder to hack? It seems to me the more connected a device is the EASIER it is to hack.
I've literally never seen the words "gains direct internet access" and "security enhancements" in the same sentence before and I hope never to do so again. A quick look at the links does indeed show that these two things are promised by the new standard, but I'm not a programmer or a security expert, I couldn't hope to penetrate the 2700 page official document.There's no requirement for manufacturers to jump to the new specification either (check the FAQ document) so if the security stuff is the slightest bit onerous I'll wager a lot of companies will stay on the older standard.
BINGO!
Harder to hack or harder to crack? It would be nice if we could use hack to mean hack at least here "News for nerds".
How exactly does it connect "directly to the internet" ? It doesn't have 3G/WiFi capability.
All I can see is that a BT 4.2 device can connect to an 'internet connected' router / phone which also supports this BT 4.2 profile (similar to PAN in BT3 with which we could do an internet tether or file share etc).
How is this "directly connected to the internet" when it is using a router to access the net. And all BT4 devices connected to smartphones are anyway getting data to/fro from the internet - like uploading your running data to a website etc.
Anyone with a better understanding care to explain ?
...and if they're touting this for the "internet of things", I'm guessing they've added a Low Energy form of PAN (which was always transparent to IPv6 anyway, being a lower network layer).
From the Bluetooth 4.2 FAQ:
Are there any mandatory features that need to be implemented to claim compliance to Bluetooth 4.2?
No, as was the case with Bluetooth 4.1, there are no mandatory features that must be claimed to use the
Bluetooth 4.2 specification. However, manufacturers are required to implement all errata applied to Bluetooth 4.2
in order to comply with the specification.
In order words, Chinese equipment manufacturers will implement the least amount possible to be able to communicate with Bluetooth 4.2-compatable internet gateways but implement none of the FIPS-compliant security measures.
DRTFA and BRTFS but I can give you an few lil tidbits about this:
1) Everything connected to the internet is connected to a router somewhere along the line... that's not interesting.
2) There are a lot of ways to connect to the internet that have absolutely nothing to do with WiFi or 3G.
3) Right now a Bluetooth device can connect to another device. That device may provide a variety of services for said Bluetooth device including providing network connectivity BUT that device isn't really connected to the Internet itself. The new spec provides this device to be connected "more directly" to the net as in it will have its own IP address. The router that it is connecting to supporting the BT4.2 protocol is really no different from the WiFi access point your WiFi equipped device is talking to. Just need to add to the alphabet soup: a,b,g,n,bt
How is this "directly connected to the internet" when it is using a router to access the net.
By that definition, NOTHING connects directly to the internet.
Anyone with a better understanding care to explain ?
The proper definition of a host running an internet-facing application being "directly connecting to the internet" is using IP for the first hop, with the packets having a route from there to and from the rest of the Connected (capital-I) Internet.
Bluetooth 4.2 added support for IPv6 to/from bluetooth devices. This means IP packets formed on, or directed to, the Bluetooth 4.2 hosts, for delivery to/from other Internet-connected devices, do not require a protocol-translation gateway to select and translate some subset of the packet types, services, and features, modifying the transport semantics to support some tiny subset of functionality that the gateway explicitly understands. An IP packet formed on the bluetooth device goes all the way to its destination semantically unmodified, and ditto packets going from some other device to the bluetooth device. The full feature set of IP (or as much of it as the stack implementer choses to support) is available, while the routers can be "as dumb as rocks" and totally ignorant of what the application on the Bluetooth device is up to, in classic Internet style.
A Bluetooth 4.2 device, using IPv6 and with a route, IS on the Internet, and is a peer to all other internet-connected hosts.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You misspelled Backdoor. We know how riddled with backdoors, default/fixed passwords, vulnerabilities that never gets fixed and so on are typical consumer embedded devices. And we know how pushy are governments forcing manufacturers to include their backdoors, or to use weak encryption standards, to make them hackeable at will (even assuming good will of the main/components manufacturers, that are not all saints).
What possibly could go wrong?
"The Bluetooth spec never quite became the worldbeater it was billed as"
What are you talking about, BT is the de-facto standard for connecting wirelessly with almost any device today, ranging from audio devices to input devices to applliances, how has it not beaten any comparable specification, in fact is there even another _usable_ alternative?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I never thought I would hear 'directly connected to internet AND more secure' in the same sentence. Is it April fools?
Silence is a state of mime.
How is this "directly connected to the internet" when it is using a router to access the net.
By that definition, NOTHING connects directly to the internet.
I feel like there is a Zen koan here:
The student asked the master, "How will I know when my computer has connected to the internet?" The master replied, "Only when it is connected to nothing will you know".
The difference is about Bluetooth & Bluetooth Smart (aka Low Energy). The second one is in fact a different protocol, once called Wibree, which uses some parts of the Bluetooth stack, but not a lot of it. While Bluetooth "Classic" already has network connectivity through PAN since a long time ago, Bluetooth Smart, introduced in the 4.0 revision of the specification, does not.
The main reason for this is that the maximum packet size in Bluetooth Smart is quite small (around 256 bytes in the original spec). The latest revision allows for higher MTUs, as well as an IPv6 header compression scheme called 6lowPAN, already developped for IEEE802.15, another low energy radio protocol.
No, Bluetooth devices needed to connect to something else that had internet connection. There was no way Bluetooth could get IPv4 addresses, since those are already limited. But with the adaption of IPv6 addresses, Bluetooth devices now have native internet addressing, as opposed to having to have a separate addressing scheme of their own.
If Bluetooth is supposed to be a player in the 'Internet of things', it only makes sense that it adapts the addressing standard capable of addressing everything.
How difficult is the first? Just get an iPod Touch, disable the internet (after downloading whatever apps you'd need) and then use it exclusively as an offline PDA
The version number of a standard should not be conflated with the number of features that the standard offers. USB 1 offered just low speed and full speed options, USB 2 added high speed options and USB 3 has added super speed options.
Now, that doesn't imply that a USB 2 keyboard works at 480Mbps. An USB 2 keyboard is still a low speed USB peripheral, but it supports version 2 of the standard - the features that are not tied to high speed. Same would go for a USB 3 mouse - it would still be a low speed peripheral, but since USB itself has been updated, it would still be a USB 3 mouse. Again, don't expect it to work at 10Gbps.
I think the phone was a bad example, since all phones would probably have WiFi. Which would bring up another question - wouldn't Bluetooth 4.2 be to WiFi what 100BaseT is to Gigabit Ethernet? In other words, an equivalent standard, but slower?
Shouldn't it be "makes it more secure and perhaps allows connectivity to Internet"
With all the holes we've seen in everything, security should be thought of the first minute, not even wait to the middle of first day of design. The only thing I saw in that landing page is "uses more encryption" which may improve information (read: privacy) leaks, but doesn't do much for security and being hacked into. This with the Sony hack still on the first page.