Bluetooth 5 | Hacker News Reader

Bluetooth 5

link.bluetooth.com

123 pointsMrQuincle67 comments

I've been really fascinated recently by whipping out my smartphone in public and using a Bluetooth LE explorer app to look at what's being advertised, and it's brilliant. We are all constantly surrounded by devices which are screaming data about themselves everywhere they go.

Bluetooth 5 seems to increase the range of LE communications, but since I'm almost sure we're going to have some horrible public hack of one of the platforms at some point, I hope there is increased focus on the security of devices that use it!

> We are all constantly surrounded by devices which are screaming data about themselves everywhere they go.

It's also terrible that people, and their clothing, are so detectable in the visible light spectrum. Where's the 'tarnkappe' when you need it?

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_of_invisibility )

Also appreciate the "will be marketed as 'Bluetooth 5.' [no dot zero]". Sounds like a band name, or a gang. Good thinking there - the Bluetooth 5 are now taking over the neighborhood ...

It's also terrible that people, and their clothing, are so detectable in the visible light spectrum.

I wasn't completely clear above, but there are a couple of differences:

- Your clothing doesn't contain unique identifiers (yet!) :)

- The devices seem to often be happy to broadcast their information in the clear. Your clothes don't advertise your position or heart rate to the whole world either!

They do "broadcast" where you shop (if someone knows where your clothes are from), what kind of job you have, your social class and many other informations about the person.

Well, that's very true. At least its easy for everyone to see what they're sharing there though!

Your clothing doesn't contain unique identifiers

But your face does...

Which requires a camera being pointed at you, whereas bluetooth isn't based on line-of-sight.

And ubiquitous public surveillance is just as troublesome. Even more so with face/movement pattern recognition or paired with other information such as MAC broadcasting.

What app have you been using?

Not sure what the GP is using, but on Android the Nordic BLE app is very good - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nordicsemi....

I'm also one of the authors of RaMBLE, another BLE app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.contextis....). It can run in the background, and can export logged BLE advertising packets and geolocation data to a SQLite DB.

I installed Ramble half an hour ago on my 2014 Moto G and it seems to be working as advertized! The only thing which confuses me is the empty list under the history tab. Is this a bug or is this feature not implemented yet?

The history tab is pull-to-refresh, but it's not particularly discoverable :)

I've implemented a UI hint to make this more obvious, which will be in the next version of RaMBLE.

You are right, pull-to-refresh was not very discoverable ;) Somehow I an auto-update function for a tab called "history".

Another thing I just realised is the number of new devices in the notification label. Let's say I put ramble in the background. After 10 minutes it tells me that there are n_1 new devices. I click on the notification in order to check them out. If I then put ramble in the background and it finds n_2 new devices then the notification says that there are now n_1 + n_2 new devices. I would expect that it says n_2 devices.

The notification is a summary of the current scan (until you stop it). New devices are ones you've never seen before the current scan. I often run it on my commute, the 'total' number give me an idea of how busy (in terms of BLE devices) it is today.

If you export the database you can pull some more interesting numbers out, e.g. http://www.contextis.com/resources/blog/bluetooth-le-increas...

The best on by far is Nordic's Master Control Panel. It's really good. Only available on Android though. I don't think there are any good ones for iOS.

Nordic MCP is also available on iOS : https://appsto.re/fr/JSe2-.i

Ah I didn't know that! Assumed my iOS-using co-workers would be using it if it did.

LightBlue Explorer – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/lightblue-explorer-bluetooth...

I have no idea if it's particularly good in comparison to others, but I downloaded it to debug a Bluetooth LE device I was building and it was a pretty straightforward UI.

It's the standard one, pretty much. The one everyone uses...

> We are all constantly surrounded by devices which are screaming data about themselves everywhere they go.

Perhaps you would like to explain what the problem with this is? Broadcasting presence in itself is not a security hole - unless you think "Do not broadcast SSID" is a WiFi AP security feature (it's not). If WiFi can be secured (with devices that "scream data about themselves"), why would Bluetooth be any different?

>If WiFi can be secured (with devices that "scream data about themselves"), why would Bluetooth be any different?

I suspect the GP is just referring to the stuff they happen to be transmitting in the clear right now because they weren't thinking about the risks. Basically like early days 802.11 when you needed to pay big money for something like wireshark.

OP doesn't seem to insinuate any problem with being surrounded by devices screaming data about themselves though?

Well, there are a couple of reasons I think this is different:

1. APs are static and not mobile, versus Bluetooth devices – which can move, and are more importantly personally associated with a person. That inherently provides opportunities for more leakage on information, since device addresses can now be used to track people.

2. Devices aren't just advertising their existence. They're also advertising their services, and in some cases actually just sending whatever data a client asks for. There's a particular brand of iPad stylus which seems to just open up and send it's accelerometer readings to any device which connects. There seem to be heart-rate monitors that do the same.

For me, it's much more worrying that devices happily broadcast personal information without authentication – I don't actually think device advertisement is a big deal in comparison!

Agreed. Checking for Bluetooth devices in the immediate area is one trick we teach in our physical counter-surveillance training for NGOs and journalists in high risk countries.

The basic problem with 2, is that until nfc became commonplace doing pairing was either by pin not at all. So many devices still accept 0000 or 1234 because they have so way to input a pin, and is too old to use nfc pairing.

Even then, quite a lot of Bluetooth LE devices don't have support for authentication as such. How to you authenticate a connection to a heart monitor, for example? It doesn't have any buttons!

I feel it's an Orwellian privacy issue. If you capture Bluetooth signatures in myriad places, you should be able to track where people are going with relative ease. Increasing the range without adding security features (if that's the case) would do nothing to ameliorate such concerns.

The tracking capability of Bluetooth is nothing next to GPS and cellular triangulation though. In an Orwellian sense, Bluetooth is not the largest threat in a mobile device.

A GPS receiver doesn't broadcast, and cellular triangulation is only possible if you control the cellular infrastructure (meaning either you are a government-level adversary or you have a set of Stingray-type devices). That's a fairly high bar.

You could track people around a fairly good area, like a shopping mall, using off-the-shelf, inexpensive Bluetooth hardware and just keeping track of where various IDs turn up. Indoors, that's probably much more accurate tracking than you could perform using cellular triangulation. It's more like the kind of tracking you do using RFID tokens in a warehouse.

I don't know if it's a problem per se, but it's something people should be aware of; many devices are constantly broadcasting a unique identifier almost all the time unless they take steps to turn it off.

> I don't know if it's a problem per se, but it's something people should be aware of; many devices are constantly broadcasting a unique identifier almost all the time unless they take steps to turn it off.

I can't tell whether you're referring to Bluetooth, WiFi, or both. WiFi is worse (longer range) and I suspect more widely used and likely to be left on on phones.

The advantage of Bluetooth is that it runs on every smartphone out there. There is quite some incentive to have the basics right. This can not be said about chips that are not present on smartphones. I'm not saying that Bluetooth cannot be hacked, before 4.2 they didn't use proper key exchange, so e.g. you could use Ubertooth (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10573) to capture the exchange. However, with Elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman it became pretty standard. The requirements from Apple for HomeKit are even so ridiculously high that your gadgets might be safer than your bank account.

My bet is that indoor positioning is gonna be the game changer in the coming years (not robotics, not AI, not voice recognition, not yet, at least). So, I'm particularly looking forwards to see what's in store on the Bluetooth roadmap in that respect. The only thing I wish is that they would be faster in rolling out mesh functionality...

Lets keep in mind that bluetooth, unlike wifi, has made use of channel hopping from day one.

Ubertooth had to be custom built to sniff bluetooth traffic, while just about any old dongle will do for wifi.

And IMO, a big advantage with bluetooth is that it has profiles for common usage scenarios. Meaning that you have defined standards for how to do things like file transfers over bluetooth, while it is wild west when it comes to wifi.

What app

Isn't it time for uncompressed A2DP audio at last? It would solve both quality (generation loss) and latency issues.

aptX already allows high-quality audio streaming over BT and has both a lossless and a low-latency mode. Device support is also already here, I saw a few last time I was in an electronics store.

Do you know of any free software implementations of it?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2531440

reusing proprietary library is as close as you can get without paying Qualcomm tax

aptX support different modes, but not all of them can run within the constraints of a Bluetooth link. There simply isn't enough bitrate in the old Bluetooth for uncompressed audio. If there was enough of it, you wouldn't need aptX or any other specialty codec, you would just run PCM and that's it. Even ADPCM at half the bitrate would be a big improvement (particularly, for latency), but there is not enough bitrate even for that.

I switched to high quality bluetooth headphones (Sony MDR-XB950BT) last year that use aptX codecs and the quality is superb (i am not an audiophile though). In the past i had problems with audio lag when using bluetooth while watching movies, but even that is so low now that i don't notice it and forget about it, while before i was very sensitive about audio not being perfectly in sync with the frames on the screen.

but you cant milk for patents if its just a raw audio stream!

Yay, even better opportunities for government and corporations to track my whereabouts through my Bluetooth signature. ;)

Tongue-in-cheek, well mostly but not entirely .. I do appreciate e.g. accurate travel times, yet refuse to believe they won't take it to the next step. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/how-vicroads-tracks-your-e...

Yet nothing new on the security side. Figures. How many cars can be hacked now thanks to Bluetooth-based locks? Millions?

Modern Bluetooth devices, including all smart phones running Windows, iOS or Android, does not use static addresses that can be used as a signature to track you.

Instead, they use private resolvable keys for all handshakes with devices around them. A new key is generated every few minutes, and only a device which you have previously bonded with is able to resolve your key through data exchanged in the bonding process.

Many BLE devices do not advertise with random addresses. iOS and Android do, but last I checked Fitbit and Tile do not.

Announced a week before the Apple event. I wonder....

yeah, I guess next Apple devices will be Bluetooth5 compatible.

I doubt it, the specification is still being finalized. Only after that will the chipmakers begin their process.

Increased advertising length will be very useful. 31 bytes is rather stingy, especially with Eddystone-URL (you only get something like 16 bytes for the URL currently).

yes, 17 bytes for the URL.

I wish they created a developer's only documentation to write drivers and apps for FOSS systems since the documentation is already huge.

What will it take for wireless keyboards and mice to use Bluetooth? Most ship with their own custom dongle. A single port MacBook, for example, doesn't really make sense until Bluetooth devices become more popular.

I suspect the problem is that many (most?) PCs don't have Bluetooth built-in, so to sell PC peripherals you'll need to either bundle a BT dongle, be very explicit about requiring one, or bundle a (probably cheaper) non-BT dongle.

Seems to be getting better though; a quick look at the local price comparison site gave 419 wireless keyboards, 296 of which are using Bluetooth.

Quite often nowadays devices have BT support but also offer a "dongle" or usb connection point as well (in case your computer doesn't have BT).

It's a solved problem I believe since BT LE (low energy) I believe. Now it's just a matter of market adoption.

Microsoft makes a Bluetooth keyboard that is ok. Not great, but there aren't many options. Dell makes a Bluetooth "travel" mouse that is actually pretty good. A little small, but lots of buttons.

I've also found that many proprietary dongle keyboards work over USB-OTG on Android phones.

bluetooth hid profile requires a software stack rivalling IPv4 in complexity. Legacy Bluetooth is really bad for anything other than BT hardware manufacturers profits. LE simplified everything and made things bearable again, no more encapsulation 4 layers deep just to send 5 bytes.

The problem with Bluetooth for peripherals is that they on PCs, the pairing happens in user space so they're useless when you need to adjust the BIOS settings or select a different operating system from GRUB.

So, we need BIOS support for Bluetooth. :-)

There are some decent options for bluetooth mice at least. I'm using a Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse[1] with my Macbook Air, and the thumb swipe gesture works well for switching spaces. It's something of a poor man's Magic Mouse for those of us who rely on having a middle mouse button.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/mice/sc... ($20 on Amazon)

Apple's accessories are already bluetooth. I'm working with a magic trackpad 2 here and it skips all the time, as expected. Magic trackpad 1 did the same. So did my previous kinesis bluetooth keyboard. So does audio. Oh right, it's OS X that can't handle bluetooth. Or RF in the case of Logitech products. Hell, they have trouble keeping wifi on. What you wish for is already here and it's already shitty, at least on OS X.

My Bluetooth devices work flawlessly with my iMac, including the Magic Mouse/KB etc. What's your RF environment like?

> What's your RF environment like?

That's what my initial thought was too. Sounds like severe 2.4GHz pollution.

I'd say it's the environment too, but this happens at various locations across the country consistently with multiple types of Macbooks. Also, at these same exact locations, I have no problem using bluetooth with my Android phone, further reducing the likelihood that it's the environment. Finally, all the threads about OS X bugs relating to BT/RF/WiFi problems that have been reported for years but ignored by Apple, including reports by Apple's own beta testers, are a further indication that this is an actual problem and that a lot of people are having it.

I've had issues with a non-bluetooth wireless keyboard when plugging the receiver into my laptop directly which go away when it's connected via a USB hub a little distance away, which makes me think the laptop itself is causing interference.

I do similar. I have my dock which has a USB extension cable that runs under the underside of my desk and basically sits directly underneath the mouse and keyboard. Connectivity issues vanished.

OS X has great support for Bluetooth, and Bluetooth mice and keyboards do not typically have the "skipping" issue you are describing.

The "it works for most people so we won't bother acknowledging or fixing it" defense is indeed Apple's position on this, but when you have a significant number of people experiencing this for multiple years (at least 5) on multiple OS versions on a multi-thousand dollar machine, it brings to question the quality of said machine. The problem is so bad, there's software out there to compensate for it (http://smoothmouse.com/) which obviously is a band aid that only works for some.

So no, it's not a defensible position as it renders the $3000 machine useless, similarly to how a $3000 car whose steering wheel steers randomly would render it useless.

> it's OS X that can't handle bluetooth

This is laughable wrong. You clearly have either a) issues with your peripherals or b) an incredibly saturated wireless signal environment.

OSX is practically the gold standard of BT integration - it's seamless for almost every application.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com