Thinking about the poor Londoners unable to call their loved ones because of the overloaded cellphone networks on Thursday morning, I wondered whether Bluetooth might help in such incidents in future. Most cellphones come with Bluetooth now (the number of devices containing Bluetooth doubled last year to 250 million; this figure is expected to double… Read More »
(Please note: I’m not in possession of any bluesnarfing software and I’m not going to link to any. So please don’t bother leaving comments requesting it.) Long distance Bluesnarfing is here. Austrian researcher and Bluetooth expert Martin Herfurt tells me that he and some friends — Mike Outmesguine, John Hering, James Burgess and Kevin Mahaffey… Read More »
Some guys in California, Mike Outmesguine, John Hering and James Burgess, have managed to connect to an ordinary Bluetooth cellphone from 1 kilometer away, using off-the-shelf stuff, including a high-gain antenna connected to a Class 1 Bluetooth adapter kit. Their conclusion: “A typical unmodified cell phone can be reached at a distance of one kilometer… Read More »
Here’s a new kind of cellphone scam (via Mike Masnick of Techdirt, writing in TheFeature): WAPjacking (well that’s what he calls it, and I like it): Taking a page from the still popular redialer scam on PCs – where a secretive trojan tries to disconnect your modem (assuming you’re using dialup) and reconnect you secretly… Read More »
Is Bluesnarfing the big problem it’s made out to be? “Traditionally,” wrote Guy Kewney of eWeek earlier this month, “security consultants have made a passable living by frightening ignorant managers with security holes. Then they charge money to fix them.” He then takes a look at bluesnarfing, which regular readers of this blog and the… Read More »