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

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

    Source

    ... and this is why I don't use bluetooth on anything.

  • ... and this is why I don't use bluetooth on anything.

    I never have it enabled unless I am in the car driving and need driving directions or listening to music/podcasts. I prefer wired headphones, but manufacturers are making that difficult.

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

    Source

    Alright now how do I test this out

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

    Source

    What is that site asking me to agree to? No thanks

  • There's lots of money to be made by inserting a hardware back door in your product then later disclosing it as an unfixable vulnerability and force your customers to buy new hardware which has the same but different backdoor. Repeat.

    Thanks, I hate it. Vulnerable to your competitor red teaming it tho...

  • 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.

    Honestly I'd be happy with a phone sporting two USB C ports, one centered and one off to the side where the headphone jack used to be, both fully functional.

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

    Source

    The site wants to share info with advertisers. I found this to be refreshingly honest.

    We and our up to 185 partners use cookies and tracking technologies. Some cookies and data processing are technically necessary, others help us to improve our offer and operate it economically...

    Anyway, can we get an archive link?

  • 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 know someone who works somewhat high up at Apple and he told me another reason was that they really wanted to improve the water proofing.

  • I never have it enabled unless I am in the car driving and need driving directions or listening to music/podcasts. I prefer wired headphones, but manufacturers are making that difficult.

    Because they can't sell you more Bluetooth crap if they give you a choice.

    Stop buying no-Jack phones.

  • What is that site asking me to agree to? No thanks

    GDPR. First time opening a European website? German ones like this are particularly transparent (by law, not choice).

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

    Source

    Sounds like the attack scenario is very sophisticated and targeted, and only works within the range of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) connectivity, so 10-15 meters under best circumstances. At that point they might as well eavesdrop on my calls in person.

  • The site wants to share info with advertisers. I found this to be refreshingly honest.

    We and our up to 185 partners use cookies and tracking technologies. Some cookies and data processing are technically necessary, others help us to improve our offer and operate it economically...

    Anyway, can we get an archive link?

    It’s strange to think about how complicit the public has become with this. You mean to tell me that 185 separate connections to other companies are required for me to… read an article?

  • I know someone who works somewhat high up at Apple and he told me another reason was that they really wanted to improve the water proofing.

    That's just gaslighting. Other phones had audio jacks, water protection, and you didn't have to hold them funny.

    My bro is a huge apple kool-aid guy and he spouts their dogma word-for-word.

  • It’s strange to think about how complicit the public has become with this. You mean to tell me that 185 separate connections to other companies are required for me to… read an article?

    Well yeah, they have to hoard your advertising data somehow. How else can they advertise things that you don't need to buy?

  • you can just permanently connect your headphones to your dongle

    No. Fuck that. My PC has a headphone jack, and I use it. I don't have a bunch of extra USB-C ports on the front of my computer. Modern phones have plenty of spaces for headphone jacks. They could put it there, they just don't want to.

    I used a USB connection through my KVM to connect to one computer or the next. But it's just something to plug my headphones into the 3.5mm jack.

    Since it never gets unplugged, it doesn't get lost; unlike all those "just have this snowflake dongle in one of all of your stuff so it can get lost monthly and you can buy another" people.

    Again: my startac 7800 had a jack and it was tiny. Apple and Samsung have NO EXCUSE.

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

    Yesss. Find that sploit and please let it never be fixable. I didn't download a copy of The Wheels On The Bus for nothing.

  • Sounds like the attack scenario is very sophisticated and targeted, and only works within the range of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) connectivity, so 10-15 meters under best circumstances. At that point they might as well eavesdrop on my calls in person.

    Directional antennas exist and are very inexpensive

  • The site wants to share info with advertisers. I found this to be refreshingly honest.

    We and our up to 185 partners use cookies and tracking technologies. Some cookies and data processing are technically necessary, others help us to improve our offer and operate it economically...

    Anyway, can we get an archive link?

    Instead of hacking Bluetooth, sounds more effective to be an "advertising partner".

  • The site wants to share info with advertisers. I found this to be refreshingly honest.

    We and our up to 185 partners use cookies and tracking technologies. Some cookies and data processing are technically necessary, others help us to improve our offer and operate it economically...

    Anyway, can we get an archive link?

    You can get/make your own archive link by going to archive.ph and entering the article's URL.

    Here's the link for this one: https://archive.ph/wUAQn

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

    Source

    Archive link: archive.ph/wUAQn

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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    M
    Sure, the internet is more practical, and the odds of being caught in the time required to execute a decent strike plan, even one as vague as: "we're going to Amerika and we're going to hit 50 high profile targets on July 4th, one in every state" (Dear NSA analyst, this is entirely hypothetical) so your agents spread to the field and start assessing from the ground the highest impact targets attainable with their resources, extensive back and forth from the field to central command daily for 90 days of prep, but it's being carried out on 270 different active social media channels as innocuous looking photo exchanges with 540 pre-arranged algorithms hiding the messages in the noise of the image bits. Chances of security agencies picking this up from the communication itself? About 100x less than them noticing 50 teams of activists deployed to 50 states at roughly the same time, even if they never communicate anything. HF (more often called shortwave) is well suited for the numbers game. A deep cover agent lying in wait, potentially for years. Only "tell" is their odd habit of listening to the radio most nights. All they're waiting for is a binary message: if you hear the sequence 3 17 22 you are to make contact for further instructions. That message may come at any time, or may not come for a decade. These days, you would make your contact for further instructions via internet, and sure, it would be more practical to hide the "make contact" signal in the internet too, but shortwave is a longstanding tech with known operating parameters.
  • 9 Stimmen
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    F
    You said it yourself: extra places that need human attention ... those need ... humans, right? It's easy to say "let AI find the mistakes". But that tells us nothing at all. There's no substance. It's just a sales pitch for snake oil. In reality, there are various ways one can leverage technology to identify various errors, but that only happens through the focused actions of people who actually understand the details of what's happening. And think about it here. We already have computer systems that monitor patients' real-time data when they're hospitalized. We already have systems that check for allergies in prescribed medication. We already have systems for all kinds of safety mechanisms. We're already using safety tech in hospitals, so what can be inferred from a vague headline about AI doing something that's ... checks notes ... already being done? ... Yeah, the safe money is that it's just a scam.
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    erasmus@lemmy.worldE
    The Convergiance is beginning. Altman Be Praised!!
  • How Do I Prepare My Phone for a Protest?

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    D
    So first, even here we see foundation money and big tech, not government. Facebook, Google, etc mostly love net neutrality, tolerate encryption, anf see utility in anonymous internet access, mostly because these things don't interfere with their core advertising businesses, and generally have helped them. I didn't see Comcast and others in the ISP oligopoly on that list, probably because they would not benefit from net neutrality, encryption, and privacy for obvious reasons. The EFF advocates for particular civil libertarian policies, always has. That does attract certain donors, but not others. They have plenty of diverse and grassroots support too. One day they may have to choose between their corpo donors and their values, but I have yet to see them abandon principles.
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    paraphrand@lemmy.worldP
    Network Effects.
  • 12 Stimmen
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    C
    Sure, he wasn't an engineer, so no, Jobs never personally "invented" anything. But Jobs at least knew what was good and what was shit when he saw it. Under Tim Cook, Apple just keeps putting out shitty unimaginative products, Cook is allowing Apple to stagnate, a dangerous thing to do when they have under 10% market share.