bluetooth vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Bluetooth SIG—an organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards—today issued a statement informing users and vendors of a newly reported unpatched vulnerability that potentially affects hundreds of millions of devices worldwide. Discovered independently by two separate teams of academic researchers, the flaw resides in the Cross-Transport Key Derivation (CTKD) of devices supporting both — Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard. Cross-Transport Key Derivation (CTKD) is a Bluetooth component responsible for negotiating the authenticate keys when pairing two Bluetooth devices together, also known as "dual-mode" devices. Dubbed 'BLURtooth' and tracked as CVE-2020-15802 , the flaw exposes devices powered with Bluetooth 4.0 or 5.0 technology, allowing attackers to unauthorizedly connect to a targeted nearby device by overwriting the authenticated key or reducing the encryption key strength. "Dual-mod...

Academics from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) disclosed a security vulnerability in Bluetooth that could potentially allow an attacker to spoof a remotely paired device, exposing over a billion of modern devices to hackers. The attacks, dubbed Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS or BIAS, concern Bluetooth Classic, which supports Basic Rate (BR) and Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) for wireless data transfer between devices. "The Bluetooth specification contains vulnerabilities enabling to perform impersonation attacks during secure connection establishment," the researchers outlined in the paper. "Such vulnerabilities include the lack of mandatory mutual authentication, overly permissive role switching, and an authentication procedure downgrade." Given the widespread impact of the vulnerability, the researchers said they responsibly disclosed the findings to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the organization that oversees the development o...

Are you using the cloud or thinking about transitioning? Undoubtedly, multi-cloud and hybrid environments offer numerous benefits for organizations. However, the cloud's flexibility, scalability, and efficiency come with significant risk — an expanded attack surface. The decentralization that comes with utilizing multi-cloud environments can also lead to limited visibility into user activity and poor access management.  Privileged accounts with access to your critical systems and sensitive data are among the most vulnerable elements in cloud setups. When mismanaged, these accounts open the doors to unauthorized access, potential malicious activity, and data breaches. That's why strong privileged access management (PAM) is indispensable. PAM plays an essential role in addressing the security challenges of complex infrastructures by enforcing strict access controls and managing the life cycle of privileged accounts. By employing PAM in hybrid and cloud environments, you're not...

Over a billion Bluetooth-enabled devices, including smartphones, laptops, smart IoT devices, and industrial devices, have been found vulnerable to a high severity vulnerability that could allow attackers to spy on data transmitted between the two devices. The vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2019-9506 , resides in the way 'encryption key negotiation protocol' lets two Bluetooth BR/EDR devices choose an entropy value for encryption keys while pairing to secure their connection. Referred to as the Key Negotiation of Bluetooth ( KNOB ) attack, the vulnerability could allow remote attackers in close proximity to targeted devices to intercept, monitor, or manipulate encrypted Bluetooth traffic between two paired devices. The Bluetooth BR/EDR (Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate, also known as "Bluetooth Classic") is a wireless technology standard that has typically been designed for relatively short-range, continuous wireless connection such as streaming audio to headsets...