Notably, an ill-intentioned person who wants to track a specific individual would need to somehow determine which signature is linked to that person's device. In a second experiment, the researchers placed a receiver at the exit of a large room and observed Bluetooth signals from more than 600 different mobile devices over the course of a single day, 47 percent of which were uniquely identifiable.Ī sniffer is used to detect the Bluetooth packets of a specific device among a crowd, effectively tracking it. In total, they collected and analyzed Bluetooth signals from 162 mobile devices, and found that about 40 percent of devices were identifiable among a crowd based on their unique signal signatures. A single phone emits hundreds of short-range Bluetooth signals per second, making it relatively easy for a nearby sniffer to produce a "fingerprint" of a device quickly. In their first experiment, they went to several public places, including a coffee shop, food court, and library, with an off-the-shelf receiver (costing less than US $200) that can "sniff" out Bluetooth signals. As a result, the Bluetooth signals from an individual device can be slightly distorted, creating a unique signature.īhaskar and his colleagues sought to explore whether these unique signatures could be used to identify individual devices in crowded areas, as well track the movement of individuals. The vulnerability originates from defects or imperfections that occur during the manufacturing process. "Unfortunately, this also means that an adversary can also find out where we are at all times by simply listening to the Bluetooth transmissions from our personal devices." "These applications require frequent and constant transmission of Bluetooth beacons to be detected by nearby devices," explains Nishant Bhaskar, a PhD student at the University of California San Diego who was involved in the research. The findings, first reported in a story by the Register, will be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in 2022. But a group of researchers at the University of California San Diego has discovered a troublesome feature of Bluetooth hardware that apps such as these rely on, which renders an estimated 40 percent of mobile devices uniquely identifiable. Apple's Find My app for finding a misplaced phone, for example, or for contact tracing COVID-19 transmissions during the pandemic. Apps that track the locations of phones have proven to be useful in so many ways.
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