Bluetooth theory

What is Bluetooth ?

Bluetooth is a high-speed, low-power microwave wireless link technology, designed to connect phones, laptops, PDAs and other portable equipment together with little or no work by the user.

Bluetooth is the name for a short-range radio frequency (RF) technology that operates at 2.4 GHz and is capable of transmitting voice and data. The effective range of Bluetooth devices is 32 feet (10 meters). Bluetooth transfers data at the rate of 1 Mbps, which is from three to eight times the average speed of parallel and serial ports, respectively. It is also known as the IEEE 802.15 standards. It was invented to get rid of wires. Bluetooth is more suited for connecting two point-to-point devices, whereas Wi-Fi is an IEEE standard intended for networking.
When the Cabir mobile worm started to attack mobile devices and used Bluetooth to spread, many people were caught by surprise. It first appeared as a proof-of-concept virus written by the A29 group, was provided to an anti-virus company, and then later appeared in the wild. The worm started spreading from infected mobile phones using the Bluetooth wireless capabilities to search for the next victim and infect it based. This infection was based on a vulnerability in the Bluetooth implementation of several Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. The virus was not dangerous, however, as it only drained the phone's battery and it still required the user to accept installation of the file. However, it showed that it is possible to write mobiles viruses that spread via Bluetooth, which may encourage a number of virus writers to take the same approach. Future Bluetooth viruses may very well be much more damaging. A good example of the potential damage that can be caused first appeared in Japan in 2001, where the virus blocked the ability to call emergency numbers. Recent vulnerabilities in Java, discovered by famous Polish security researcher Adam Gowdiak, could also be used by mobile virus writers to break the Java mobile security model and get access to the phone's memory, affecting many things including changing the very way the phone works.

Increased popularity of mobile worms and viruses would certainly have an impact on the GSM operator as well. Blocking certain phone numbers and making customers frustrated with any inability to make phone calls on infected handsets would direct cause a lost of revenue. The added possibility of installing a backdoor on the handset would also have an impact on the privacy of the users, as malicious hackers could easily use Bluetooth or GPRS to read the Phonebook, Calendar, any SMS messages, and download photos from the phone.

The recent attack of the newer Mabir worm shows not only that mobile viruses are a growing trend but also that mobile viruses are getting more sophisticated. Cabir used only Bluetooth to spread, whereas its successor Mabir.A uses both Bluetooth and MMS to replicate, which is quite an improvement. The worm also sends an MMS in a reply to any received SMS, which is clever technique to fool the user into installing the received application. However, besides interesting techniques such as this, overall the Mabir worm is still relatively simple and does not use any sophisticated attacks on specific application or system vulnerabilities. Compare this to the most dangerous worms affecting personal computers today, which tend to benefit from vulnerabilities in the PC's operating system or applications in order to propagate. This area has not yet been explored by the mobile virus writers. Could this be a future attack vector for a mobile viruses? This author believes it is quite possible, and that such an approach can even include vulnerabilities in Bluetooth related applications on mobile phones. To prove this point, let's look at some simple yet unpublished vulnerabilities that exist today.
computer networking theory
bluetooth zone