Eavesdropping on Bluetooth headsets

Technology

Here’s a short video in which Joshua Wright demonstrates how a Bluetooth headset can be hijacked, allowing audio to be captured or sent to the device:

Few users realize that Bluetooth headsets can be exploited granting a remote attacker the ability to record and inject audio through the headset while the device is not in an active call. SANS Institute author and senior instructor Joshua Wright demonstrates.

All that is necessary is knowing the device address, which can be easily sniffed, and the secret pin, which defaults to 0000. The headset audio is tapped while not in a call, so any room conversation the headset’s mic can pick up can potentially be listened to remotely.

24 thoughts on “Eavesdropping on Bluetooth headsets

  1. ethana2 says:

    Sweet! I’m heading over to wiili.org right now… game consoles are worthless to me, but I may consider buying a wii instead of a PS3 with this new development. I’m glad to hear this can’t be broken with a simple firmware update, as the folks over at psubuntu.com just had the RSX locked down on them again, which is made more horrible now that nouveau finally has rendering with gallium.

  2. alex says:

    Awesome achievements

    observation:

    These people suck at giving speeches.
    The speech wasn’t presented too well and it was slightly disorganized. Notice, at the end, the guy read “Sorry we are over our time” off of a script.

  3. The Thompson Five says:

    Good news. Some day the Nintendo’s of the world are going to realize that hackability can be another selling point. It’s the main reason I bought my kids PSPs instead of DS’s this x-mas.

  4. Dirk says:

    Great. Game consoles are part of many households. I know many kids who have all of them. DSi, PSP, X Box, PS3 and Wii.
    Funny world.

  5. wii homebrew says:

    You
    will play Nintendo and non-Nintendo games on Wii console using emulators. Wii
    Homebrew Channel enable these emulators to play SNES, SEGA Geneses, GameCube,
    N64, PlayStation and much more on Wii.

  6. wii homebrew says:

    You
    will play Nintendo and non-Nintendo games on Wii console using emulators. Wii
    Homebrew Channel enable these emulators to play SNES, SEGA Geneses, GameCube,
    N64, PlayStation and much more on Wii.

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