When the mention of malware usually evokes thoughts of the internet, Bluetooth vulnerabilities are surprisingly not uncommon. A new family of them has just been discovered, which affects over 1400 types of devices.
Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design have revealed what they call a family of malware called BrakTooth. As the word family suggests, it’s a collection of 20 vulnerabilities, based on 13 different Bluetooth products sold by 11 different vendors. This translates to about 1400 products including phones, laptops, headphones and other devices using the wireless tech.
As for what can be done using BrakTooth, it can be used to perform denial of service attacks as well as arbitrary code execution of vulnerable devices. You’ve probably heard these terms before relating to vulnerabilities on PC, and they mostly work the same way.
The former makes it so that a victim’s Bluetooth connection to be disrupted, which may need a manual reconnecting to fix. The latter can be used to erase and possibly steal data, since it also allows for the hacker to use the affected device to interact with other devices.
For what it’s worth, the researchers have reached out to the makers of the chipsets affected by BrakTooth. Some have already released a fix, while others are either still investigating or working on a fix.
