Security News > 2022 > June > Hardware flaws give Bluetooth chipsets unique fingerprints that can be tracked

There are technological and expertise hurdles that a miscreant would have to clear today to track a person through the Bluetooth signals in their devices, they wrote.

The researchers - who hail from the school's departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering - pointed to the applications governments added to Apple iOS and Android devices used in the COVID-19 pandemic that send out constant Bluetooth signals - or beacons - for contact-tracing efforts.

An attacker would first need to isolate the target to capture the fingerprint in the wireless transmissions and find the unique physical-layer features of the device's Bluetooth transmitter.

One test found that 40 percent of 162 devices detected were identifiable via their unique fingerprints; in another experiment 47 percent of 647 mobile devices could be identified.

Among them are that Bluetooth devices have varying chipsets that all have different hardware implementations, and some devices have less powerful Bluetooth transmissions than others.

"By evaluating the practicality of this attack in the field, particularly in busy settings such as coffee shops, we found that certain devices have unique fingerprints, and therefore are particularly vulnerable to tracking attacks. Others have common fingerprints - they will often be misidentified."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/06/10/smartphone-bluetooth-tracking/