Biblio

Bluetooth Classic (BT) remains the de facto connectivity technology in car stereo systems, wireless headsets, laptops, and a plethora of wearables, especially for applications that require high data rates, such as audio streaming, voice calling, tethering, etc. Unlike in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), where address randomization is a feature available to manufactures, BT addresses are not randomized because they are largely believed to be immune to tracking attacks. We analyze the design of BT and devise a robust de-anonymization technique that hinges on the apparently benign information leaking from frame encoding, to infer a piconet's clock, hopping sequence, and ultimately the Upper Address Part (UAP) of the master device's physical address, which are never exchanged in clear. Used together with the Lower Address Part (LAP), which is present in all frames transmitted, this enables tracking of the piconet master, thereby debunking the privacy guarantees of BT. We validate this attack by developing the first Software-defined Radio (SDR) based sniffer that allows full BT spectrum analysis (79 MHz) and implements the proposed de-anonymization technique. We study the feasibility of privacy attacks with multiple testbeds, considering different numbers of devices, traffic regimes, and communication ranges. We demonstrate that it is possible to track BT devices up to 85 meters from the sniffer, and achieve more than 80% device identification accuracy within less than 1 second of sniffing and 100% detection within less than 4 seconds. Lastly, we study the identified privacy attack in the wild, capturing BT traffic at a road junction over 5 days, demonstrating that our system can re-identify hundreds of users and infer their commuting patterns.

BLE is used to transmit and receive data between sensors and devices. Most of the IOT devices employ BLE for wireless communication because it suits their requirements such as less energy constraints. The major security vulnerabilities in BLE protocol can be used by attacker to perform MITM attacks and hence violating confidentiality and integrity of data. Although BLE 4.2 prevents most of the attacks by employing elliptic-curve diffie-Hellman to generate LTK and encrypt the data, still there are many devices in the market that are using BLE 4.0, 4.1 which are vulnerable to attacks. This paper shows the simple demonstration of possible attacks on BLE devices that use various existing tools to perform spoofing, MITM and firmware attacks. We also discussed the security, privacy and its importance in BLE devices.

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) are becoming inevitable in this world of high technology as it provides low cost access to broadband services. Moreover, the technologists are doing research to make WMN more reliable and secure. Subsequently, among wireless ad-hoc networking technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is gaining high degree of importance among researchers due to its easy availability in the gadgets and low power consumption. BLE started its journey from version 4.0 and announced the latest version 5 with mesh support capability. BLE being a low power and mesh supported technology is nowadays among the hot research topics for the researchers. Many of the researchers are working on BLE mesh technology to make it more efficient and smart. Apart from other variables of efficiency, like all communication networks, mesh network security is also of a great concern. In view of the aforesaid, this paper provides a comprehensive review on several works associated to the security in WMN and BLE mesh networks and the research related to the BLE security protocols. Moreover, after the detailed research on related works, this paper has discussed the pros and cons of the present developed mesh security mechanisms. Also, at the end after extracting the curx from the present research on WMN and BLE mesh security, this research study has devised some solutions as how to mitigate the BLE mesh network security lapses.

Bluetooth Low Energy is a fast growing protocol which has gained wide acceptance during last years. Key features for this growth are its high data rate and its ultra low energy consumption, making it the perfect candidate for piconets. However, the lack of expandability without serious impact on its energy consumption profile, prevents its adoption on more complex systems which depend on long network lifetime. Thus, a lot of academic research has been focused on the solution of BLE expandability problem and BLE mesh has been introduced on the latest Bluetooth version. In our point of view, most of the related work cannot be efficiently implemented in networks which are mostly comprised of constrained-resource nodes. Thus, we propose a new energy efficient tree algorithm for BLE static constrained-resources networks, which achieves a longer network lifetime by both reducing as much as possible the number of needed connection events and balancing the energy dissipation in the network.

Researchers and industry experts are looking at how to improve a shopper's experience and a store's revenue by leveraging and integrating technologies at the edges of the network, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, cloud-based systems, and mobile applications. The integration of IoT technology can now be used to improve purchasing incentives through the use of electronic coupons. Research has shown that targeted electronic coupons are the most effective and coupons presented to the shopper when they are near the products capture the most shoppers' dollars. Although it is easy to imagine coupons being broadcast to a shopper's mobile device over a low-power wireless channel, such a solution must be able to advertise many products, target many individual shoppers, and at the same time, provide shoppers with their desired level of privacy. To support this type of IoT-enabled shopping experience, we have designed Aggio, an electronic coupon distribution system that enables the distribution of localized, targeted coupons while supporting user privacy and security. Aggio uses cryptographic mechanisms to not only provide security but also to manage shopper groups e.g., bronze, silver, and gold reward programs) and minimize resource usage, including bandwidth and energy. The novel use of cryptographic management of coupons and groups allows Aggio to reduce bandwidth use, as well as reduce the computing and energy resources needed to process incoming coupons. Through the use of local coupon storage on the shopper's mobile device, the shopper does not need to query the cloud and so does not need to expose all of the details of their shopping decisions. Finally, the use of privacy preserving communication between the shopper's mobile device and the CouponHubs that are distributed throughout the retail environment allows the shopper to expose their location to the store without divulging their location to all other shoppers present in the store.

Ever-driven by technological innovation, the Internet of Things (IoT) is continuing its exceptional evolution and growth into the common consumer space. In the wake of these developments, this paper proposes a framework for an IoT home security system that is secure, expandable, and accessible. Congruent with the ideals of the IoT, we are proposing a system utilizing an ultra-low-power wireless sensor network which would interface with a central hub via Bluetooth 4, commonly referred to as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), to monitor the home. Additionally, the system would interface with an Amazon Echo to accept user voice commands. The aforementioned central hub would also act as a web server and host an internet accessible configuration page from which users could monitor and customize their system. An internet-connected system would carry the capability to notify the users of system alarms via SMS or email. Finally, this proof of concept is intended to demonstrate expandability into other areas of home automation or building monitoring functions in general.

Bluetooth Low Energy device is increasing in popularity due to its lower energy consumption and reliable connectivity compared to the classic Bluetooth. Some of these BLE devices collects and transmits health care data like the heart rate as in a Fitbit smart band. This paper will demonstrate that Bluetooth Low Energy devices that relies on BLE security has weak communication security and how to solve that problem using a private-key encryption algorithm.

At present, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is dominantly used in commercially available Internet of Things (IoT) devices – such as smart watches, fitness trackers, and smart appliances. Compared to classic Bluetooth, BLE has been simplified in many ways that include its connection establishment, data exchange, and encryption processes. Unfortunately, this simplification comes at a cost. For example, only a star topology is supported in BLE environments and a peripheral (an IoT device) can communicate with only one gateway (e.g. a smartphone, or a BLE hub) at a set time. When a peripheral goes out of range, it loses connectivity to a gateway, and cannot connect and seamlessly communicate with another gateway without user interventions. In other words, BLE connections do not get automatically migrated or handed-off to another gateway. In this paper, we propose a system which brings seamless connectivity to BLE-capable mobile IoT devices in an environment that consists of a network of gateways. Our framework ensures that unmodified, commercial off-the-shelf BLE devices seamlessly and securely connect to a nearby gateway without any user intervention.

The Physical Web is a project announced by Google's Chrome team that essentially provides a framework to discover "smart" physical objects (e.g. vending machines, classroom, conference room, cafeteria etc.) and interact with specific, contextual content without having to resort to downloading a specific app. A common app such as the open source and freely available Physical Web app on the Google Play Store or the BKON Browser on the Apple App Store, can access nearby beacons. A current work-in-progress at the University of Maui College is developing a campus-wide prototype of beacon technology using Eddystone-URL and EID protocol from various beacon vendors.

Secure location sensing has the potential to improve healthcare processes regarding security, efficiency, and safety. For example, enforcing close physical proximity to a patient when using a barcode medication administration system (BCMA) can mitigate the consequences of unsafe barcode scanning workarounds. We present Beacon+, a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) device that extends the design of Apple's popular iBeacon specification with unspoofable, temporal, and authenticated advertisements. Our prototype Beacon+ design enables secure location sensing applications such as real-time tracking of hospital assets (e.g., infusion pumps). We implement this exact real-time tracking system and use it as a foundation for a novel application that applies location-based restrictions on access control.