When we talk about Bluetooth devices, our mobile phone comes to mind. The nerve center of all the wireless connections in our home is now exposed to a new security problem detected by the organizations behind this wireless technology.
A few hours ago a series of tips were published that all mobile device manufacturers, as well as providers, should follow to face a new attack, called BLURtooth , directed at devices with Bluetooth capabilities. These experts claim that it is a vulnerability in a component of the Bluetooth standard called Cross-Transport Key Derivation (CTKD), responsible for configuring authentication keys when pairing two devices with each other.
A danger with a solution … on the way
Pairing two Bluetooth devices configures two different sets of authentication keys for the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Basic Rate / Enhanced Data Rate (BR / EDR) standard. CTKD’s job is to have the keys ready and let the paired devices decide which version of the Bluetooth standard they want to use. This is where this dangerous vulnerability has been detected.
Organizations such as the SIG and the CERT warn that due to this “failure” detected in the process, an attacker could manipulate the CTKD component to overwrite other Bluetooth authentication keys on a device. In this way, an attacker could be granted permissions to connect via Bluetooth to other Bluetooth-compatible services / applications on the same device.
The most “tricky” thing is that, today, all devices that use the Bluetooth 4.0 to 5.0 standard are vulnerable to these attacks and these are the most widespread versions on our mobile phones. in return, those smartphones purchased in recent months that work under the Bluetooth 5.1 standard are free of the problem by having features that can prevent attacks of this type.
The only way to protect against BLURtooth attacks is to control the environment in which Bluetooth devices pair, to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks, or pairing with unreliable devices. However, it has already been confirmed that patches are being worked on to eliminate this vulnerability, with a view to supplying them as soon as possible to manufacturers to include them as firmware updates for the affected terminals.
To know if your phone is protected against this failure and to know if you have received a patch for BLURtooth attacks , you can check the information present in the firmware version and operating system of your phone and locate the identifier CVE-2020-15802 that says end this vulnerability.
Source>ZDNet
