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Zero-day: Bluetooth gap turns millions of headphones into listening stations

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  • The flaws, discovered by German cybersecurity firm ERNW and first reported by Heise Online, affect dozens of headphone models from brands such as Sony, JBL, Bose, and Marshall, with no comprehensive firmware fixes available yet.

    • Sony WH-1000XM4/5/6, WF-1000XM3/4/5, LinkBuds S, ULT Wear, CH-720N, C500, C510-GFP, XB910N
    • Marshall ACTON III, MAJOR V, MINOR IV, MOTIF II, STANMORE III, WOBURN III
    • JBL Live Buds 3, Endurance Race 2
    • Jabra Elite 8 Active
    • Bose QuietComfort Earbuds
    • Beyerdynamic Amiron 300
    • Jlab Epic Air Sport ANC
    • Teufel Airy TWS 2
    • MoerLabs EchoBeatz
    • Xiaomi Redmi Buds 5 Pro
    • earisMax Bluetooth Auracast Sender

    ERNW emphasizes that this is only a partial list.

    Source

    Damn that's pretty big, hopefully they update and give a final list of affected devices. Not to mention, gotta pray the devices will see software updates to try and mitigate it.

  • I mean, there were legitimate technical issues with the standard, especially on smartphones, which is where they really got pushed out. Most other devices do have headphones jacks. If I get a laptop, it's probably got a headphones jack. Radios will have headphones jacks. Get a mixer, it's got a headphones jack. I don't think that the standard is going to vanish anytime soon in general.

    I like headphones jacks. I have a ton of 1/8" and 1/4" devices and headphones that I happily use. But they weren't doing it for no reason.

    • From what I've read, the big, driving one that drove them out on smartphones was that the jack just takes up a lot more physical space in the phone than USB-C or Bluetooth. I'd rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people don't, and if you're going all over the phone trying to figure out what to eject to buy more space, that's gonna be a big target. For people who do want a jack on smartphones, which invariably have USB-C, you can get a similar effect to having a headphones jack by just leaving a small USB-C audio interface with a headphones jack on the end of your headphones (one with a passthrough USB-C port if you also want to use a USB-C port for other things).

    • A second issue was that the standard didn't have a way to provide power (there was a now-dead extension from many years back that is now dead, IIRC for MD players, that let a small amount of power be provided with an extra ring). That didn't matter for a long time, as long as your device could put out a strong enough signal to drive headphones of whatever impedance you had. But ANC has started to become popular now, and you need power for ANC. This is really the first time I think that there's a solid reason to want to power headphones.

    • The connection got shorted when plugging things in and out, which could result in loud sound on the membrane.

    • USB-C is designed so that the springy tensioning stuff that's there to keep the connection solid is on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord rather than the (expensive, hard to replace) device; I understand from past reading that this was a major reason that micro-USB replaced mini-USB. Instead of your device wearing out, the cord wears out. Not as much of an issue for headphones as mini-USB, but I think that it's probably fair to say that it's desirable to have the tensioning on the cord side.

    • On USB-C, the right part breaks. One irritation I have with USB-C is that it is...kind of flimsy. Like, it doesn't require that much force pushing on a plug sideways to damage a plug. However --- and I don't know if this was a design goal for USB-C, though I suspect it was --- my experience has been that if that happens, it's the plug on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord that gets damaged, not the device. I have a television with a headphones jack that I destroyed by tripping over a headphones cord once, because the headphones jack was nice and durable and let me tear components inside the television off. I've damaged several USB-C cables, but I've never damaged the device they're connected to while doing so.

    On an interesting note, the standard is extremely old, probably one of the oldest data standards in general use today; the 1/4" mono standard was from phone switchboards in the 1800s.

    EDIT: Also, one other perk of using USB-C instead of a built-in headphones jack on a smartphone is that if the DAC on your phone sucks, going the USB-C-audio-interface route means that you can use a different DAC. Can't really change the internal DAC. I don't know about other people, but last phone I had that did have an audio jack would let through a "wub wub wub" sound when I was charging it on USB off my car's 12V cigarette lighter adapter --- dirty power, but USB power is often really dirty. Was really obnoxious when feeding my car's stereo via its AUX port. That's very much fixable by putting some filtering on the DAC's power supply, maybe needs a capacitor on the thing, but the phone manufacturer didn't do it, maybe to save space or money. That's not something that I can go fix. I eventually worked around it by getting a battery-powered Bluetooth receiver that had a 1/8" headphones jack, cutting the phone's DAC out of the equation. The phone's internal DAC worked fine when the phone wasn't charging, but I wanted to have the phone plugged in for navigation stuff when I was driving.

    Great post, thank you.

  • Sony WH-1000XM4/5/6

    I don't have one of those, but they're pretty popular as headphones with good ANC.

    Jlab Epic Air Sport ANC

    I do have those, though.

    Yeah. I have the previous version of the WH which seems not affected, but I also have the WF 3 which unfortunately seems to be.

    Many people have sony headphones with those chips.

  • The only time a hacker is going to target you like this is if you're an extremely high value target like a CEO or if you're in the crosshairs of a nation-state. The average hacker isn't going to waste this kind of effort to hack someone with $200 in their bank account and no power over anything or anyone.

  • The Bluetooth chipset installed in popular models from major manufacturers is vulnerable. Hackers could use it to initiate calls and eavesdrop on devices.

    Source

    I was hoping this would allow me to take over Bluetooth speakers that people use while skiing and replace their music with a PSA about how no one wants to hear their music

    Most annoying people on the mountain

  • Double post

  • and also why corporations didn't want them.

    Exactly! So they can spy on us more!

    No, the real reason is it saves a few pennies per phone. They can already spy on us through the internal mic.

  • I mean, there were legitimate technical issues with the standard, especially on smartphones, which is where they really got pushed out. Most other devices do have headphones jacks. If I get a laptop, it's probably got a headphones jack. Radios will have headphones jacks. Get a mixer, it's got a headphones jack. I don't think that the standard is going to vanish anytime soon in general.

    I like headphones jacks. I have a ton of 1/8" and 1/4" devices and headphones that I happily use. But they weren't doing it for no reason.

    • From what I've read, the big, driving one that drove them out on smartphones was that the jack just takes up a lot more physical space in the phone than USB-C or Bluetooth. I'd rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people don't, and if you're going all over the phone trying to figure out what to eject to buy more space, that's gonna be a big target. For people who do want a jack on smartphones, which invariably have USB-C, you can get a similar effect to having a headphones jack by just leaving a small USB-C audio interface with a headphones jack on the end of your headphones (one with a passthrough USB-C port if you also want to use a USB-C port for other things).

    • A second issue was that the standard didn't have a way to provide power (there was a now-dead extension from many years back that is now dead, IIRC for MD players, that let a small amount of power be provided with an extra ring). That didn't matter for a long time, as long as your device could put out a strong enough signal to drive headphones of whatever impedance you had. But ANC has started to become popular now, and you need power for ANC. This is really the first time I think that there's a solid reason to want to power headphones.

    • The connection got shorted when plugging things in and out, which could result in loud sound on the membrane.

    • USB-C is designed so that the springy tensioning stuff that's there to keep the connection solid is on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord rather than the (expensive, hard to replace) device; I understand from past reading that this was a major reason that micro-USB replaced mini-USB. Instead of your device wearing out, the cord wears out. Not as much of an issue for headphones as mini-USB, but I think that it's probably fair to say that it's desirable to have the tensioning on the cord side.

    • On USB-C, the right part breaks. One irritation I have with USB-C is that it is...kind of flimsy. Like, it doesn't require that much force pushing on a plug sideways to damage a plug. However --- and I don't know if this was a design goal for USB-C, though I suspect it was --- my experience has been that if that happens, it's the plug on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord that gets damaged, not the device. I have a television with a headphones jack that I destroyed by tripping over a headphones cord once, because the headphones jack was nice and durable and let me tear components inside the television off. I've damaged several USB-C cables, but I've never damaged the device they're connected to while doing so.

    On an interesting note, the standard is extremely old, probably one of the oldest data standards in general use today; the 1/4" mono standard was from phone switchboards in the 1800s.

    EDIT: Also, one other perk of using USB-C instead of a built-in headphones jack on a smartphone is that if the DAC on your phone sucks, going the USB-C-audio-interface route means that you can use a different DAC. Can't really change the internal DAC. I don't know about other people, but last phone I had that did have an audio jack would let through a "wub wub wub" sound when I was charging it on USB off my car's 12V cigarette lighter adapter --- dirty power, but USB power is often really dirty. Was really obnoxious when feeding my car's stereo via its AUX port. That's very much fixable by putting some filtering on the DAC's power supply, maybe needs a capacitor on the thing, but the phone manufacturer didn't do it, maybe to save space or money. That's not something that I can go fix. I eventually worked around it by getting a battery-powered Bluetooth receiver that had a 1/8" headphones jack, cutting the phone's DAC out of the equation. The phone's internal DAC worked fine when the phone wasn't charging, but I wanted to have the phone plugged in for navigation stuff when I was driving.

    A lot of great points here, I would be on aboard if phones therefore had two USB-C ports as standard

  • A speaker i have from bose is always on and "sleeping" and can be connected to from the phone no matter what i do, drains the fucking battery and when i want to use it finaly its dead.. wouldnt be surprised if some headphones worked the same..

    A smart outlet (and running home assistant) will solve that problem.

  • It sounds like they have some kind of wake function that it’s always listening for? I don’t think that’s a common feature in headphones just because of the battery drain, but they’re always chucking useless features on electronics so I’m sure some are floating around out there. I doubt it’s something you wouldn’t know about unless they were secondhand, though.

    It's BLE - Bluetooth Low Energy.

    Basically devices with BLE can listen for a wake-up command and turn on, similar to the "magic packet" of wake on Ethernet.

    Super convenient for "find my device" applications, also nice to be able to connect and activate the device without having to press a power button like a peasant.

    It also means that most devices with BLE end up flat within a month. I had a speaker with BLE and had to deliberately download a much older version of the Android partner app to turn it off, as they dropped the option to do so in later versions for "convenience". With BLE on it would be flat in about 6 weeks regardless of whether I'd used it or not , which really ruined ad-hoc usage for me.

  • I was hoping this would allow me to take over Bluetooth speakers that people use while skiing and replace their music with a PSA about how no one wants to hear their music

    Most annoying people on the mountain

    Or public transit. Or public parks. Or grocery stores.

  • The Bluetooth chipset installed in popular models from major manufacturers is vulnerable. Hackers could use it to initiate calls and eavesdrop on devices.

    Source

    My Redmi buds 5 had a firmware update available for me in the app. It could be an older one though, their patch notes suck and don't even say the date. v4.3.8.8

  • I mean, there were legitimate technical issues with the standard, especially on smartphones, which is where they really got pushed out. Most other devices do have headphones jacks. If I get a laptop, it's probably got a headphones jack. Radios will have headphones jacks. Get a mixer, it's got a headphones jack. I don't think that the standard is going to vanish anytime soon in general.

    I like headphones jacks. I have a ton of 1/8" and 1/4" devices and headphones that I happily use. But they weren't doing it for no reason.

    • From what I've read, the big, driving one that drove them out on smartphones was that the jack just takes up a lot more physical space in the phone than USB-C or Bluetooth. I'd rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people don't, and if you're going all over the phone trying to figure out what to eject to buy more space, that's gonna be a big target. For people who do want a jack on smartphones, which invariably have USB-C, you can get a similar effect to having a headphones jack by just leaving a small USB-C audio interface with a headphones jack on the end of your headphones (one with a passthrough USB-C port if you also want to use a USB-C port for other things).

    • A second issue was that the standard didn't have a way to provide power (there was a now-dead extension from many years back that is now dead, IIRC for MD players, that let a small amount of power be provided with an extra ring). That didn't matter for a long time, as long as your device could put out a strong enough signal to drive headphones of whatever impedance you had. But ANC has started to become popular now, and you need power for ANC. This is really the first time I think that there's a solid reason to want to power headphones.

    • The connection got shorted when plugging things in and out, which could result in loud sound on the membrane.

    • USB-C is designed so that the springy tensioning stuff that's there to keep the connection solid is on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord rather than the (expensive, hard to replace) device; I understand from past reading that this was a major reason that micro-USB replaced mini-USB. Instead of your device wearing out, the cord wears out. Not as much of an issue for headphones as mini-USB, but I think that it's probably fair to say that it's desirable to have the tensioning on the cord side.

    • On USB-C, the right part breaks. One irritation I have with USB-C is that it is...kind of flimsy. Like, it doesn't require that much force pushing on a plug sideways to damage a plug. However --- and I don't know if this was a design goal for USB-C, though I suspect it was --- my experience has been that if that happens, it's the plug on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord that gets damaged, not the device. I have a television with a headphones jack that I destroyed by tripping over a headphones cord once, because the headphones jack was nice and durable and let me tear components inside the television off. I've damaged several USB-C cables, but I've never damaged the device they're connected to while doing so.

    On an interesting note, the standard is extremely old, probably one of the oldest data standards in general use today; the 1/4" mono standard was from phone switchboards in the 1800s.

    EDIT: Also, one other perk of using USB-C instead of a built-in headphones jack on a smartphone is that if the DAC on your phone sucks, going the USB-C-audio-interface route means that you can use a different DAC. Can't really change the internal DAC. I don't know about other people, but last phone I had that did have an audio jack would let through a "wub wub wub" sound when I was charging it on USB off my car's 12V cigarette lighter adapter --- dirty power, but USB power is often really dirty. Was really obnoxious when feeding my car's stereo via its AUX port. That's very much fixable by putting some filtering on the DAC's power supply, maybe needs a capacitor on the thing, but the phone manufacturer didn't do it, maybe to save space or money. That's not something that I can go fix. I eventually worked around it by getting a battery-powered Bluetooth receiver that had a 1/8" headphones jack, cutting the phone's DAC out of the equation. The phone's internal DAC worked fine when the phone wasn't charging, but I wanted to have the phone plugged in for navigation stuff when I was driving.

    That's great and all but I'm not switching to Bluetooth headphones and I'm definitely not going to fiddle around with dongles every time I switch between listening on my phone and my PC. Phones are gigantic anyways; let my have my headphone jack. I don't think it's a coincidence that all these smartphone manufacturers that ditched the old standard will happily sell you shiny expensive disposable wireless earbuds.

  • I mean, there were legitimate technical issues with the standard, especially on smartphones, which is where they really got pushed out. Most other devices do have headphones jacks. If I get a laptop, it's probably got a headphones jack. Radios will have headphones jacks. Get a mixer, it's got a headphones jack. I don't think that the standard is going to vanish anytime soon in general.

    I like headphones jacks. I have a ton of 1/8" and 1/4" devices and headphones that I happily use. But they weren't doing it for no reason.

    • From what I've read, the big, driving one that drove them out on smartphones was that the jack just takes up a lot more physical space in the phone than USB-C or Bluetooth. I'd rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people don't, and if you're going all over the phone trying to figure out what to eject to buy more space, that's gonna be a big target. For people who do want a jack on smartphones, which invariably have USB-C, you can get a similar effect to having a headphones jack by just leaving a small USB-C audio interface with a headphones jack on the end of your headphones (one with a passthrough USB-C port if you also want to use a USB-C port for other things).

    • A second issue was that the standard didn't have a way to provide power (there was a now-dead extension from many years back that is now dead, IIRC for MD players, that let a small amount of power be provided with an extra ring). That didn't matter for a long time, as long as your device could put out a strong enough signal to drive headphones of whatever impedance you had. But ANC has started to become popular now, and you need power for ANC. This is really the first time I think that there's a solid reason to want to power headphones.

    • The connection got shorted when plugging things in and out, which could result in loud sound on the membrane.

    • USB-C is designed so that the springy tensioning stuff that's there to keep the connection solid is on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord rather than the (expensive, hard to replace) device; I understand from past reading that this was a major reason that micro-USB replaced mini-USB. Instead of your device wearing out, the cord wears out. Not as much of an issue for headphones as mini-USB, but I think that it's probably fair to say that it's desirable to have the tensioning on the cord side.

    • On USB-C, the right part breaks. One irritation I have with USB-C is that it is...kind of flimsy. Like, it doesn't require that much force pushing on a plug sideways to damage a plug. However --- and I don't know if this was a design goal for USB-C, though I suspect it was --- my experience has been that if that happens, it's the plug on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord that gets damaged, not the device. I have a television with a headphones jack that I destroyed by tripping over a headphones cord once, because the headphones jack was nice and durable and let me tear components inside the television off. I've damaged several USB-C cables, but I've never damaged the device they're connected to while doing so.

    On an interesting note, the standard is extremely old, probably one of the oldest data standards in general use today; the 1/4" mono standard was from phone switchboards in the 1800s.

    EDIT: Also, one other perk of using USB-C instead of a built-in headphones jack on a smartphone is that if the DAC on your phone sucks, going the USB-C-audio-interface route means that you can use a different DAC. Can't really change the internal DAC. I don't know about other people, but last phone I had that did have an audio jack would let through a "wub wub wub" sound when I was charging it on USB off my car's 12V cigarette lighter adapter --- dirty power, but USB power is often really dirty. Was really obnoxious when feeding my car's stereo via its AUX port. That's very much fixable by putting some filtering on the DAC's power supply, maybe needs a capacitor on the thing, but the phone manufacturer didn't do it, maybe to save space or money. That's not something that I can go fix. I eventually worked around it by getting a battery-powered Bluetooth receiver that had a 1/8" headphones jack, cutting the phone's DAC out of the equation. The phone's internal DAC worked fine when the phone wasn't charging, but I wanted to have the phone plugged in for navigation stuff when I was driving.

    I’d rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people wouldn’t

    I think this is a case where the corporations were telling people what they wanted rather than people really asking for thinner phones. Same thing with bezels, I don't know anyone who asked for the screen to go all the way to the edge (or worse, curve around onto the sides). Apple and Samsung said 'this is what people want' when in fact it was what their marketing department wanted because they wouldn't be able to sell the iGalaxy N+1 if it was slightly thicker or heavier than the iGalaxy N.

  • Every spy in my vicinity is going to be dancing to The Meters - Cissy Strut.

    Shitty Beatles & the meters.. I'll follow you anywhere

  • Every spy in my vicinity is going to be dancing to The Meters - Cissy Strut.

    Awwwwwwwwwwwwww YAH

  • The Bluetooth chipset installed in popular models from major manufacturers is vulnerable. Hackers could use it to initiate calls and eavesdrop on devices.

    Source

    They said I was mad when they removed the headphone jack - well who’s mad now??! AHAHahahahaaaaaaahhhhcrap it’s me.

    I’m still mad. Fuckers.

  • The Bluetooth chipset installed in popular models from major manufacturers is vulnerable. Hackers could use it to initiate calls and eavesdrop on devices.

    Source

    I had a neighbor about 6 years ago that blasted rap at full volume every evening.

    rap booming in the background

    one fine day

    "hmmm, what were these headphones on bt again? wait... soundbar. I don't have a soundbar.

    hmmm, I wonder"

    device paired

    Jellyfin>Artists>..... Meshuggah

    Obzen

    Combustion

    play

    Volume 100%

    "I think I'll go to the store for a while!"

  • I had a neighbor about 6 years ago that blasted rap at full volume every evening.

    rap booming in the background

    one fine day

    "hmmm, what were these headphones on bt again? wait... soundbar. I don't have a soundbar.

    hmmm, I wonder"

    device paired

    Jellyfin>Artists>..... Meshuggah

    Obzen

    Combustion

    play

    Volume 100%

    "I think I'll go to the store for a while!"

    Elastic would’ve been amazing (among other things, it has all songs on the album laid on top of another, playing simultaneously)

  • Elastic would’ve been amazing (among other things, it has all songs on the album laid on top of another, playing simultaneously)

    This one is great for destroying speakers: warning super loud (turn down your volume before playing) https://m.soundcloud.com/osium-1/official-paul-walker-tribute-fast-and-furious-7

  • Final Nokia feature phones coming before HMD deal ends in 2026

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    HMD feature phones are such a let down. The Polish language translation within the system is clearly automated translation - the words used sometimes don't make sense. CloudFone apps are also not available in Europe. The HMD 110 4G (2024, not 2023) has the Unisoc T127 chipset which supports hotspot, but HMD deliberately chose not to include it. I know because the Itel Neo R60+ has hotspot with the same chipset. At least they made Nokia XR21 in Europe for a while.
  • 123 Stimmen
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    Clear copyright over reach. News titles or tiny excerpts should not copyrightable - that's just idiotic. If thag stops readers from reading your article then it was never good enough to begin with.
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    Tragedy of the commons? Everyone wants to use it, no one wants to put forward the resources to maintain it.
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    I tried before, but I made my life hell on earth. I only have whatsapp now because its mandatory. Since 2022, I only have lemmy, mastodon and unfortunately whatsapp as social media.
  • How to delete your Twitter (or X) account

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    I also need to know the way to delete twitter account of my brand : https://stylo.pk/ .
  • Microsoft's AI Secretly Copying All Your Private Messages

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    Forgive me for not explaining better. Here are the terms potentially needing explanation. Provisioning in this case is initial system setup, the kind of stuff you would do manually after a fresh install, but usually implies a regimented and repeatable process. Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots are like a save state in a game, and are often used to reset a virtual machine to a particular known-working condition. Preboot Execution Environment (PXE, aka ‘network boot’) is a network adapter feature that lets you boot a physical machine from a hosted network image rather than the usual installation on locally attached storage. It’s probably tucked away in your BIOS settings, but many computers have the feature since it’s a common requirement in commercial deployments. As with the VM snapshot described above, a PXE image is typically a known-working state that resets on each boot. Non-virtualized means not using hardware virtualization, and I meant specifically not running inside a virtual machine. Local-only means without a network or just not booting from a network-hosted image. Telemetry refers to data collecting functionality. Most software has it. Windows has a lot. Telemetry isn’t necessarily bad since it can, for example, help reveal and resolve bugs and usability problems, but it is easily (and has often been) abused by data-hungry corporations like MS, so disabling it is an advisable precaution. MS = Microsoft OSS = Open Source Software Group policies are administrative settings in Windows that control standards (for stuff like security, power management, licensing, file system and settings access, etc.) for user groups on a machine or network. Most users stick with the defaults but you can edit these yourself for a greater degree of control. Docker lets you run software inside “containers” to isolate them from the rest of the environment, exposing and/or virtualizing just the resources they need to run, and Compose is a related tool for defining one or more of these containers, how they interact, etc. To my knowledge there is no one-to-one equivalent for Windows. Obviously, many of these concepts relate to IT work, as are the use-cases I had in mind, but the software is simple enough for the average user if you just pick one of the premade playbooks. (The Atlas playbook is popular among gamers, for example.) Edit: added explanations for docker and telemetry
  • *deleted by creator*

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