Security News > 2020 > February > Bluetooth bugs – researchers find 10 “Sweyntooth” security holes

Nine of the ten bugs can so far only be exploited to force an affected device either to reboot or to hang; only one can potentially be abused by crooks to access your device without needing you to let them pair with it first.

The other bugs are somewhat milder - at the moment, all the researchers have been able to do with them is reboot or freeze a device.

Most of the bugs are buffer overflows, meaning that the vulnerable device can be sent N bytes of data that it then tries to store into M bytes of memory, where M < N. There isn't a lot of spare memory in a Bluetooth Low Energy chip, so the chances are that if you write past the end of the memory block reserved for storing, say, a device name, you'll stray straight into an important memory that comes next, say, the number of seconds to wait for the network to settle after an error.

As for the bugs that could crash or freeze your devices: make a habit of checking up on your devices regularly if you rely on them being up and running.

The researchers were able to crash one device that couldn't easily be rebooted because it didn't have a power button, so they had to remove and replace the battery to get it to restart.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/14/bluetooth-bugs-researchers-find-10-sweyntooth-security-holes/