June 9, 2006
PC hidden in 'BlueBag' exposes Bluetooth flaws
If you happened to pass through Milan's Malpensa Airport in March, your mobile phone may have been scanned by the BlueBag, reports Robert McMillan IDG News Service via Digital World Tokyo.
"Billed as a research lab on wheels, BlueBag, a PC-based device, was created by Milan's Secure Network o study how malicious software might be able to spread among devices that use Bluetooth.
Basically, it's a Bluetooth-sniffing computer hidden in a suitcase that was also rolled through train stations, a shopping center, and even a computer security conference show floor this year to see how many Bluetooth-enabled devices attackers could potentially infect with a worm or a virus.
The answer: quite a lot. In just under 23 hours of travel, BlueBag was able to spot more 1,400 devices with which, in theory, it could have connected. Among the discoverable devices were a number of Nokia mobile phones and TomTom global positioning systems, said Stefano Zanero, Secure Network's co-founder and chief technology officer.
... BlueBag's data is going to help Secure Network's researchers understand how attackers might use Bluetooth's ability to connect with other devices to create a targeted attack." ...
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