Requires Free Membership to View
To address this problem, disable a device's "discoverable" setting. An attacker can still force a discovery, but deactivating discoverability makes this somewhat more difficult. (The Bluetooth Special Internet Group says it will address the vulnerability in a new specification -- to be released in 2006.) Also, if your company creates its own client builds -- disk images -- for its PCs, set Bluetooth to be deactivated by default.
Of course, when two Bluetooth devices create a trusted relationship -- known as pairing -- at least one of them must be discoverable. However, device pairing is an infrequent activity, so it's best to keep the functionality deactivated whenever possible.
FIVE BLUETOOTH SECURITY BASICS
Home: Introduction
Step 1: Learn the lingo
Step 2: Disable devices
Step 3: Authentication and encryption
Step 4: Acceptable use
Step 5: User education
| Mathew Schwartz is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer based in Paris, France. He regularly contributes information security and corporate compliance stories to Enterprise Systems, Information Security magazine, and IT Compliance Now. His work also appears in numerous other publications, including the Times of London and Wired News. Other recent work includes a 235-page usability report on the world's top 10 intranets, coauthored for the Nielsen Norman Group. Corporate writing clients have included life-insurance firm SBLI, and Intel. |
This was first published in May 2005
Security Management Strategies for the CIO
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation