Bluetooth is hacked (again)

[vanished]

59 minutes ago, Hiitchy said:

Well, I've already booked an appointment with my audiologist to disable the bluetooth module on my hearing aids. She said about 5 other people called requesting the same thing. She's in the dark about this whole thing right now.

That's probably wise.  You have to assume the worst when it comes to medical devices for your own safety.  To me, that means someone could adjust volume, or play other sounds, possibly damaging your ears further, or even possibly brick the device, which I know are quite expensive.

[ionbasa]

Good guy Apple, no security vulnerability on iOS 10+, which means 4yr old iPhone 5s is still covered. 

[VicBar]

18 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I rarely use it on mine, except in very specific circumstances.

^{_{*and suddenly, a new exploit is announced that turns your BT on without any user intervention*}}

Well if siri and or google assitant or cortana can turn on bluetooth, then maybe they can do what the other new post talked about! (Sound waves under the hearing range of humans but audible to phones used to command phones without the target noticing)

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, VicBar said:

Well if siri and or google assitant or cortana can turn on bluetooth, then maybe they can do what the other new post talked about! (Sound waves under the hearing range of humans but audible to phones used to command phones without the target noticing)

Except I checked, and I had previously disabled the Google voice commands (forgot that I had done it).  I left it enabled in Google Maps just in case, but I only have that open when driving, and even then extremely rarely.

 

It's certainly possible someone could trigger it, but I've taken as many precautions as I'm able to, so I'm not going to worry about it any more.

[Levisallanon]

11 minutes ago, VicBar said:

Well if siri and or google assitant or cortana can turn on bluetooth, then maybe they can do what the other new post talked about! (Sound waves under the hearing range of humans but audible to phones used to command phones without the target noticing)

lol that would be a nice setup. Having a "room" where people walk into where the sounds turns on the bluetooth and then this is used to take over the device  .

[Linus_torvalds]

On 9/13/2017 at 10:19 PM, Katsunaka said:

Welp, you can hack my headphones, portable speaker all you want.  

 

My phones BT has to be on for you to hack it. So have fun with that. 

Well i see you do not have heard about apple's new "feature" in iOS 11

You can't turn off wifi & BT from control center. You press off but it does not do that. It's still on for some functionalities. If you want to turn them off for real you must go this way Settings >> Wifi >> OFF

Nice apple....

[colonel_mortis]

On 14/09/2017 at 5:18 PM, Hiitchy said:

Well, I've already booked an appointment with my audiologist to disable the bluetooth module on my hearing aids. She said about 5 other people called requesting the same thing. She's in the dark about this whole thing right now.

It isn't an inherent issue with Bluetooth, it's just a suite of vulnerabilities for Android, Linux and Windows (and iOS <10) that exploit Bluetooth to spread, so while any given device may well have vulnerabilities, they haven't been discovered/disclosed in this announcement. If you don't use Bluetooth in your hearing aids, by all means it makes sense to disable it, but if you use it then this announcement doesn't necessarily mean that it's important to disable it.