Bluetooth Security Vulnerability Discovered

A Bluetooth vulnerability has the potential to allow a nearby hacker to gain unauthorized access to a device.

• By Sydny Shepard
• Jul 26, 2018

A newly discovered Bluetooth vulnerability that was published this week by Intel has the potential to allow a nearby hacker to gain unauthorized access to a device, intercepting traffic and sending forged pairing messages between two vulnerable Bluetooth devices.

The vulnerability affects Bluetooth operating system drivers of Apple, Broadcom, Intel and Qualcomm.

"A vulnerability in Bluetooth pairing potentially allows an attacker with physical proximity to gain unauthorized access via an adjacent network, intercept traffic and send forged pairing messages between two vulnerable Bluetooth devices." Intel explained in a press release. "This may result in information disclosure, elevation of privilege and/or denial of service."

According to Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), it is not likely that many users were impacted by the vulnerability.

"For an attack to be successful, an attacking device would need to be within wireless range of two vulnerable Bluetooth devices that were going through a pairing procedure," SIG said. "The attacking device would need to intercept the public key exchange by blocking each transmission, sending an acknowledgment to the sending device, and then injecting the malicious packet to the receiving device within a narrow time window. If only one device had the vulnerability, the attack would not be successful."

Apple has already introduced a fix for the bug on its devices, so iOS and Mac users need not to worry. Intel, Broadcom and Qualcomm have also introduced fixes, while Microsoft says its devices are not affected.