5 Most Common Bluetooth Vulnerabilities That May Affect You

Bluetooth has fueled the wireless revolution that has taken off in recent years. It is a kind of personal area network which people can use to send media and other files over a small distance. Bluetooth Vulnerabilities are still common despite it being so popular that can affect the privacy of your data over this type of network. 

What is Bluetooth and How Does It Work?

Before talking about Bluetooth Vulnerabilities, get familiar with Bluetooth. It is a type of Personal Area Network that makes file sharing and other low bandwidth communications easier. 

They generally use a specific chip in your system, mobile or any other device, that uses low power radio waves. These have a frequency of generally 2.4 GHz. The two devices connect using this frequency. These devices can now share files, stream music and even share an internet connection. 

Since Bluetooth offers these functionalities, it is quite popular and used regularly by people. Therefore, it is very important to know its limitations and vulnerabilities.

What Are Bluetooth Vulnerabilities?

One of its cons is the relatively low security which exposes it to significant loopholes and vulnerabilities. Bluetooth Vulnerabilities serve various purposes like  spamming, data theft, gaining unauthorized access etc.

To prevent this, you should be careful about the steps you take and always be aware of these loopholes. Read this article further to know about the various types of vulnerabilities and possible steps that you may take for prevention.

Various Common Bluetooth Vulnerabilities

As we discussed, Bluetooth Vulnerabilities are common so here is the list of some attacks that exploit these loopholes:

• Bluetooth Snarfing: Attackers use this attack to connect to your device and extract all the information that they can from your system. The hacker can access the media, emails and other data that is present in the system. To prevent this from happening, only approve the connection requests from people you trust.
• Bluetooth Smacking: This attack is a DOS (Denial Of Service) that is done to flood your device with requests and force it to shutdown. The cybercriminals use a large quantity of large packets of data. Generally, this is a precursor to a larger attack.
• Bluetooth Jacking: The user device is sent unwanted spams and attempts of phishing are made in this  attack. These may also contain links with malware and other viruses apart from being irritating. You can resolve this by restricting the visibility of your device and rejecting unwanted Bluetooth requests.
• Bluetooth Eavesdropping: In this attack, the attacker just monitors the data being sent on the Bluetooth network. Bear in mind, “just” is a relative term here and is being used in reference to other more serious Bluetooth Vulnerabilities. This attack compromises the privacy of the devices on networks. Moreover, hackers use this information to carry out other attacks
• Man-in-the-Middle Attacks: Here, the attacker in addition to intercepting the message being transmitted, also modifies the original contents of the message. The modified message may contain malware or spam content. These can occur due to connection in unsecured networks and accepting unsolicited pairing requests. You should be aware of any unusual activity over the network.

These are the 5 most common Bluetooth Vulnerabilities that may happen to you. Hence always be aware and familiarize yourselves with these attacks.

Conclusion

In this article you will learn about how Bluetooth has become the giant it is today and also about the 5 most common Bluetooth Vulnerabilities that you may encounter while using this type of network to communicate.