Bluesnarfing

Bluesnarfing is the unauthorized access of information from a wireless device through a Bluetooth connection, often between phones, desktops, laptops, and PDAs. This allows access to a calendar, contact list, emails and text messages, and on some phones users can copy pictures and private videos. Currently available programs must allow connection and to be 'paired' to another phone to copy content. There may be other programs that can break into the phones without any control, but if they exist they are not made publicly available by the developer. One instance of Bluesnarfing software that was demonstrated (but never made available for download) utilised weaknesses in the Bluetooth connection of some phones. This weakness has since been patched by the Bluetooth standard. There seem to be no available reports of phones being Bluesnarfed without pairing, since the patching of the Bluetooth standard.

Bluesnarfing is much more serious than Bluejacking, but both exploit others' Bluetooth connections without their knowledge. Any device with its Bluetooth connection turned on and set to "discoverable" (able to be found by other Bluetooth devices in range) may be susceptible to Bluejacking, and possibly to Bluesnarfing when and if Bluesnarfing of the current Bluetooth security becomes possible.

By turning off this feature, the potential victim can be safer from the possibility of being Bluesnarfed; although a device that is set to "hidden" may be Bluesnarfable by guessing the device's MAC address via brute force. As with all brute-force attacks, the main obstacle to this approach is the sheer number of addresses. Bluetooth uses a 48-bit unique MAC Address, of which the first 24 bits are common to a manufacturer [1]. The remaining 24 bits have approximately 16.8 million possible combinations, requiring an average of 8.4 million attempts to guess by brute force.

Because Bluesnarfing is an invasion of privacy, it is illegal in many countries.

It is important not to confuse Bluesnarfing with Bluejacking. While Bluejacking is essentially harmless and does not result in the exposure of any data in the victim's handset, Bluesnarfing is the copying of information from the victim's Bluetooth device.

See also

• Bluejacking
• Bluebugging
• Pod slurping
• Snarfing

External links

• Blooover — A bluesnarfing proof-of-concept
• Bluesnarfer — A bluesnarfing tool for Linux
• Bluesnarfing and more