In this post I want to talk about a very essential part of my workflow when dealing with Bluetooth devices, particularly IoT devices with a corresponding mobile app: Live capture of Android Bluetooth traffic with Wireshark.
Before you stop reading because you think you know how to do this already, the method does not involve pulling bug reports off your phone, and it does not require root. And most importantly it gives you a live packet log in Wireshark.
Continue readingWhen conducting pentests of Bluetooth devices or whilst working on Bluetooth related research, we often use Bumble. In this Blogpost I will present a solution to capture a live stream of Bumble Bluetooth traffic in Wireshark.
Bumble is a fully featured Bluetooth stack, written entirely in Python. What makes it extremely powerful for security assessments and research is the level of control it provides. It can simulate certain conditions, including errors, with a level of precision that most Bluetooth stacks don’t offer. However, sometimes you not only need control, you also need visibility.
Continue readingAbout six months ago we released a security advisory on this blog about vulnerabilities in Airoha-based Bluetooth headphones and earbuds. Back then, we didn’t release all technical details to give vendors more time to release updates and users time to patch their devices. Around the time of the initial partial disclosure in the beginning of June, Airoha put out an SDK release for their customers that mitigates the vulnerabilities. Now, half a year later, we finally want to publish the technical details and release a tool for researchers and users to continue researching and check whether their devices are vulnerable.
Continue readingImportant note: Some media coverage on this topic falsely or inaccurately depicts the attack conditions. To be clear: Any vulnerable device can be compromised if the attacker is in Bluetooth range. That is the only precondition.
During our research on Bluetooth headphones and earbuds, we identified several vulnerabilities in devices that incorporate Airoha Systems on a Chip (SoCs). In this blog post, we briefly want to describe the vulnerabilities, point out their impact and provide some context to currently running patch delivery processes as described at this year’s TROOPERS Conference.
Continue readingDuring our recent research, we experimented with different Bluetooth USB dongles. There are tons of options, and sometimes, it’s challenging to determine what chipset a dongle actually contains, what Bluetooth features it supports, and whether it works on Linux. Inspired by the recent ESP32 Bluetooth research, we wondered whether we could turn our Raspberry Pi Pico Ws into a functioning Bluetooth dongle. We had a few lying around, and the advantage here is that we know exactly which Bluetooth controller it uses – the Infineon CYW43439. It’s also very easy to get one. You can just buy the Pico W for a few bucks, even cheaper than some Bluetooth dongles. You also have a controller family that has been researched quite a bit in the internalblue project. However, there was one disadvantage. We did not find any code that exposes the CYW43439’s HCI interface via USB. So we had to write that on our own.
Continue readingAs part of our research into the Auracast feature set in Bluetooth, we also started looking into vendor implementations. At the time we started with our research, there weren’t a lot of products on the market yet. But new products are coming out pretty frequently now.
One of the vendors that had Auracast implemented pretty early was Samsung. At the time the Samsung Galaxy S23 and S24 phones were able to broadcast Audio, while the Galaxy Buds were able to join these broadcasts.
Continue readingAuracast, the new Bluetooth LE Broadcast Audio feature has gained some publicity in the past months. The Bluetooth SIG has introduced the LE Audio feature-set to the Bluetooth 5.2 Specification in 2019 and vendors are only now starting to implement it. Auracast facilitates broadcasting audio over Bluetooth LE to a potentially unlimited number of devices. It does not require pairing or interaction between the sender and the receivers.
We also presented this topic at 38c3. This blog post will contain similar contents albeit with some more details.
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