How Secure is Bluetooth Technology?
With wireless networking comes the concern of security. How can you secure your devices connected by Bluetooth technology? How can you protect the information you send on your devices from being intercepted by hackers and unauthorized users?
Bluetooth does offer a variety of security modes, and each Bluetooth-enable device comes with one of these modes. In general to protect your Bluetooth connections, user can create a list of "trusted devices". Users can exchange data between the selected devices without asking for permission. However, when unrecognized devices try to send information to your device, the users can accept or deny information.
Bluetooth Comes with Security Options
Bluetooth offers service-level protection and device-level protection to secure your Bluetooth-enabled devices. The authorization and identification procedures that comes with Bluetooth's service-level protection, restricts anyone other than the registered Bluetooth user from using the service. It also lets the user to accept or reject a file or incoming data.
If you tend to use your Bluetooth mainly to connect your personal devices at home and not for socializing with other Bluetooth equipped friends, you can simply set your Bluetooth to the "non-discoverable" mode. This prevents other Bluetooth devices and users from connecting to your Bluetooth. This is one way you use Bluetooth's device-level protection.
Bluetooth's authorization and authentication processes often filters out malicious files from opening onto your device. Since you have to first accept the harmful file from the unknown user, and then agree to install it. This two step process, often prevents security breaches.
Security Concerns
However, Bluetooth like any other wireless networking has some security glitches. These glitches include: bluejacking, bluebugging and Car Whispers.
Bluejacking occurs when a Bluetooth user sends a generic text message or business card to other Bluetooth users within the proximity of 32 feet. If the user doesn't recognize that the sender may be harmful, he may accept the message. So the sender will be added to his contact list. After the unknown sender gets on the user's contact list, they can send another message automatically to the user, without having the user approve it.
Bluebugging is more serious and occurs when a hacker accesses a user's phone and can place calls and send text message to the user's contacts without the user knowing.
The piece of software called Car Whisperer lets hackers transmit and receive audio from a Bluetooth-enabled car stereo.
