Bluetooth DoS Attacks

Summary

Excerpt From Bluetooth Vulnerabilities (Part 1) Webinar
CTO Dr. Brett Walkenhorst on Bluetooth DoS Attacks
The denial-of-service attacks in Bluetooth networks are outlined by CTO Dr. Brett Walkenhorst. These attacks cause packet errors and failed connections by flooding transmissions with an attacker’s packets. This can be by purposefully jamming particular devices or whole frequency bands. The necessity for strong security measures in Bluetooth technology is highlighted by the potential impact these assaults may have on Bluetooth networks and devices.

Video Transcript

Another version of denial of service would be just me blocking certain transmissions from being successfully received by their counterpart device. And and I need to have some kind of power advantage don't have to be stronger than the other device, but I have to be strong enough that I can corrupt that bit stream that's modulated onto some carrier.

So if I can overwhelm it to flip a flip enough bits, then the CRC will fail and and the recipient will drop the packet. So I can effectively suppress certain communications and I can do that in a very targeted way. I can also do it for the entire band.

Just to be a jerk, I could do it for maybe the three dedicated advertising channels for Bluetooth flow energy. And that's gonna screw up a lot because then nobody's gonna be able to find one another and go through the pairing process. So that's that's kind of a jerky thing to do too, but I create this bubble around me where no one's gonna be able to do anything.

I can also target specific packet types or more likely I'm going to target specific connections and networks. So for example, I could, in the process of of these guys communicating back and forth, I could just jam one side. I could follow them around in their frequency hopping because I figured that out somehow, where they're going.

I just follow them around and I just keep jamming, say the peripheral over and over again. I can jam that peripheral. And pretty soon, the central realizes that it's not gonna get any more packets, and it thinks that peripheral maybe went away because it can't ever decode anything.

So it'll just drop the the channel or it'll drop the network. And remember, this can be done from fairly far away. You don't have to be really close to make that happen.