“Partner Project- Bluetooth Vulnerability” Final Draft



Mobile phones and Laptops are more apart of are world today then ever. A survey by CTIA of wireless carriers revealed that over 285 million Americans are mobile subscribers, about 91 percent of the total population. We want to take a look at how secure mobile phones really are. If so many citizens use mobile phones, what could happen if cell phone’s data wasn’t as secure as we once thought. Our research shows that bluetooth technology is the most used means of attempting mobile phone security breaches. Bluetooth is an open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short wavelength radio transmissions) from fixed and mobile devices. One of the essential elements of ensuring widespread uses was the having low expectations of users technical ability and minimum levels of user setup and configuration. Each bluetooth device will creating a personal area networks (PANs) with high levels of security.

Despite this security, the wireless nature of bluetooth means that the signals being sent through the air can be intercepted by others. During the communication the address itself isn’t enrypted although the message maybe encrypted. When that signal is caught out of the air it can be analysed and decoded. A would-be attacker could also connect a bluetooth monitor and mouse to your pc to take control and steal your data, or someone could hack into the connection between your mobile phone and bluetooth headset to listen in on your conversation. In addition a hacker could use Brute Force address discovery process to record the MAC address and hack the device with software called RedFang. This software is widely available for download (http://www.net-security.org/software.php?id=519).

There are also ways that attackers can spoof the identity of a particular device, to take its place in a bluetooth connection. To combat these risks, bluetooth was designed with several security measures in place. Generally when you connect two devices, you need to input a PIN on both. This sets up a secured connection between the two. One other hacking technique that gets around this is called “bluesnarfing” which can apparently allow hackers to silently access a mobile phone’s contacts, calendars, and pictures. There is at least one worm that attempts to spread itself via bluetooth, and DoS (Denial of Service) attacks are also possible. So in short, there are a lot of vulnerabilities of the bluetooth architecture. (Source- http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/undergrad/4ba2.05/group15/index.html)

To start our study we went to three locations and attempted to see which of these bluetooth PAN networks were accessible. In each location there at least 20 or so students (most with phones and laptops) with visible and accessible PANs. We then wanted to conduct a survey to poll people’s knowledge of bluetooth technology and mobile phone security. In our survey we found that most subjects barely even knew what bluetooth technology was. Most had seen the bluetooth symbol on their wireless devices but didn’t know much about how to turn it off or what implications it had. After we informed the subjects that bluetooth technology could possibly lead to a security breach most felt they would be more careful in the future.

The faculty of engineering at University of Ulster did a case study very similar to ours but on a much larger scale. They first researched bluetooth vulnerabilities and learned about the different means of hacking bluetooth enabled devices. Like us, they did this to gauge the overall lack of awareness in the area and to identify the percentage of popular devices susceptible to security breaches. They found that over 340 devices were detected during the five day period of their study. They were able to see that over 50 of the 340 devices could be at risk for attack. Companies such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson have since acknowledged the existence of bluetooth vulnerabilities and recommend users “to set their bluetooth devices to undiscoverable” and that they wouldn’t be releasing a fix for these vulnerabilities because the potential for attacks are limited. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2682865/Case-Study-on-the-Bluetooth-Vulnerabilities-in-Mobile-Devices

In addition to Nokia’s tip to make your device “undiscoverable” here are a are a few additional steps that will help ensure that your mobile phone isn’t breached. Firstly don’t accept any request to pair your device if you’re not facilitating this. Secondly use atypical patters as PIN keys when you are attempting to pair your device. Thirdly delete devices that you aren’t using but are still paired with. Lastly enable encryption when establishing connections and make sure to get the latest security updates installed. These tips should help prevent unauthorized connections to your device.
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/30045.aspx