Bluetooth PAN Basics
Privacy
12 | P a g e
Chapter 8: Privacy
Being a wireless form of communication bluetooth is automatically subject to
hacking threats. By allowing communication between wireless devices, bluetooth also
allows individuals access to anothers personal information.
Although mobile phones are the most threatened by the privacy and security
breaches of this technology, other devices such as PDAs and personal laptops are also
highly subjectable. At this time in the development of such an advanced technology
there are some serious flaws.
Ones mobile phone is a personal device; mobile phones can store numerous types of
private information. The flaws found in the bluetooth technology used in mobile
phones entails the ability of strangers to hack into ones private information and use
that in many ways.
The attacker can download information such as phone numbers from the address
book, text messages in the phone and also calender events. An attacker could even
plant phony text messages in a phone's memory, or turn the phone sitting in a victim's
pocket or on a restaurant table top into a listening device to pick up private
conversations in the phone's vicinity.
As Bluetooth is included in devices such as mobile phones, that most people carry
with them all the time and every device is uniquely identified by its device address,
privacy issues are raised. For example within a building; their approximate position
could be known in real time. That is because the address, just like MAC addresses3,
have a fixed per manufacturer part, that would help distinguish an Ericsson phone from
a Nokia one. Even if the distance to the device cannot be known with high precision
due to many differences in signal strength adjustment by several manufacturers, the
address itself could be used to identify a visible device. This can be done, for example
by having multiple Bluetooth access points that send inquiry requests for new devices
each second. Any device that gets into their range could then be detected and
identified using the Bluetooth device address.
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