Last March, experts from the Spanish cybersecurity company Tarlogic shared their findings regarding a vulnerability in communications bluetooth used every day by many of your devices: from wireless headphones to mobile phones, tablets and computers.
Then, the specialists of the firm of Galician origin abounded in how their solution, if it fell into the wrong hands, It could carry a number of dangers. From the theft of personal data to the interception of private communications.
BlueTrustthe name with which Tarlogic baptized his discovery, was presented at RootedCON, the largest cybersecurity event in Spain, which was held in Madrid last March. Antonio Vazquez and Jesus Mª Gomez They were in charge of explaining to a packed audience how this technique worked.
In that session, Tarlogic professionals explained how they managed to impersonate a Bluetooth device and, as a result of that interception, design a map of connected and paired devices. In this way, one of the fundamentals of the Bluetooth protocol is broken: the confidentiality of said communications.
Always have this button on your mobile turned off if you do not want cybercriminals to fleece you
Despite the potential dangers that this innovation entails if it falls into the wrong hands, Vazquez and Gomez they have climbed back on some tables to share this Friday afternoon other possible use cases. These days have been taking place within the framework of the EuskalHack conferences.
The cyber specialists have addressed the keys to their research detailing 2 more specific and highly relevant use cases: forensic analysis and Red Team exercises. In cybersecurity, Red Team is the team inside or outside an organization that is in charge of testing its defenses through cyberattacks against its own perimeter.
A technology that helps the police to extract data from a blocked mobile
tarlogic
In the case of forensic analysis, BlueTrust would allow police officers who have to investigate the information of a blocked mobile terminal to access them without a password.
Even if a mobile is blocked, its Bluetooth can be activated. In this way, BlueTrust can be used to clone the identity of the phone, store it and then impersonate it, thus obtaining information such as locations —so it could be demonstrated that the mobile was in certain places, near locks or paired smart televisions.
Connections of that analyzed mobile could also be studied with other terminals of other peopleto try to prove possible interpersonal relationships of the suspect, and extract all kinds of information that the investigations take wherever necessary: from discovering possible movements to accessing contacts or the terminal’s call history.
BlueTrust to verify the cybersecurity of companies and organizations
Similarly, BlueTrust could be used to perpetrate attacks with the Red Team, since the professionals that are part of it will be able to see how their attack surface is expanding —and, consequently, the specialists in building these cyber defenses will have to assume a greater challenge, also protecting everything that is necessary.
With BlueTrust, Red Team professionals could streamline their phase in detecting vulnerable devices by detecting relationships between devices remotely and asynchronously, ensuring even more discretion when launching such attacks.
With the information extracted from these devices, the Red Team specialists will be able to improve their assaults with social engineering techniques —for example, emails with phishing to try to make their victims give up their credentials without being aware of it— and even knowledge to carry out a physical attack against the facilities of the company under review.
Vazquez and Gomez have also explained that both the tools and the BlueTrust research code will be released in the coming months in a responsible disclosure exercise —responsible disclosurea common industry term that refers to the disclosure of these findings for the entire cyber community to improve its capacity and resilience.
In a statement from the company itself, it is stated that “the technology and methods developed by the Tarlogic Innovation team will be made available to all users to Facilitate new work to be carried out that allows further research into Bluetootha key standard of this era.”
