In doing some cursory research about Apple’s implementation of BLE, I found some other projects that had also looked at BLE and utilized some of their open-source work to ascertain whether or not the problem still existed. After listening to a talk being given by a group known as FuriousMAC about the Apple Continuity Protocol and some reverse engineering they did on Apple’s implementation of BLE, I wanted to check this potentially huge privacy concern out for myself. My research started by accident while attending ShmooCon 2020. However, this near ubiquitous usage has caused some concern for the potential privacy and data protection implications that come along with the ways in which the technology is sometimes implemented and used. Coupled with its low energy usage, Bluetooth v4.0 has been an easy choice when deciding how to best interface smartphones with an array of IOT devices. Since the release of Bluetooth v4.0, the technology has been integrated almost everywhere– from phones, to watches, to fridges, toasters, headphones and more. The first phone to have a built-in capability for BLE (Bluetooth v4.0) was the iPhone 4S, released in 2011. As the name would suggest, BLE was intended to offer a similar range, compared to standalone BR/EDR while requiring considerably less power to operate. Bluetooth as a whole is operated at the 2.400-2.4835 GHz band with 80x 1MHz channels for BR/EDR and 40x 2MHz channels for LE.īluetooth Low Energy, also known as Bluetooth Smart, was implemented as part of the Bluetooth v4.0 specification in an effort to better tailor the standard towards more Internet of Things (IOT) applications, as well as for other novel uses. BR/EDR were effectively the two main configurations of Bluetooth up until version 4. BR/EDR, as it’s usually referred to, is the older configuration that is what people traditionally think of when they think of Bluetooth. Over time, as improvements were made to the standard to increase range and throughput while decreasing battery usage, Bluetooth was split into several different core configurations, namely Basic Rate (BR), Enhanced Data Rate (EDR), and Low Energy (LE). Over time, the technology was standardized into IEEE Standard 802.15.1, which has since been superseded as the technology has changed. Originally adopted in 1998 by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the Bluetooth standard was designed originally for wireless headsets by Swedish inventor, Johan Ullman. Given the usefulness of sending certain device information as part of Apple’s continuity features, it is likely that these issues may not ever be fixed.īluetooth is a wireless short-range radio communication technology that has been around for decades. In the process of my own research, I discovered that Apple has still not yet fixed this privacy concern, which was raised in March of 2019. I was able replicate the work of security research groups Hexway and FuriousMAC, who analyzed and researched in detail the formatting of the BLE packets sent by Apple devices. According to the group, information such as the MAC address down to the current state of the device, OS level and even phone number can be accessed simply by sniffing for through the unencrypted Bluetooth Low Energy traffic emitted from most modern Apple Products. This makes the privacy concern originally discovered by group of security researchers called Hexway even more concerning. Don’t be stupid!įrom Apple’s own website, they state that privacy is one of their core values. Replication of this study in full or in part is done at your own risk. Reasonable measures were taken to ensure that I would not collect, harvest, or retain any personally identifiable information. Scanning Bluetooth Low Energy frames from Apple devices has an inherent risk in potentially intercepting data that could have information such as MAC addresses, hashes of phone numbers and other device-specific information. No Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was collected in the act of research for this assignment.
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