Bluetooth security analysis for mobile phones

Authors

Abstract

Mobile devices are becoming more and more omnipresent due to their lightweight, small size and increasing performance. Almost every mobile device has Bluetooth (BT) capabilities and this powerful combination widely used in our daily life is coming to new environments like the car and the military industries. As any technology, BT has security issues that hackers have extensively exploited over the years, while users seem not to care too much. To raise the security awareness we present an analysis of BT attack methods and tools over time. We paid particular attention to the severity, possible targets and the ability to persist over new versions of BT. Results show that adversaries can take complete control of the victims’ mobile device features if they forget to use simple safety measures like turning off the BT when not in use. To increase security we also propose the development of a novel BT Firewall.

Keywords

Mobile Phones, Security, Hack, Attack, Bluetooth

Conference

7th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI 2012) 2012