Bluesnarfing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bluesnarfing is the unauthorized access of information from a wireless device through a Bluetooth connection, often between phones, desktops, laptops, and PDAs. This allows access to a calendar, contact list, emails and text messages. Recently there have been cases of people calling premium rate numbers, without the user knowing.[citation needed] Bluesnarfing is much more serious in relation to Bluejacking, but both exploit others' Bluetooth connections without their knowledge. Any device with its Bluetooth connection turned on and set to "discoverable" (able to be found by other Bluetooth devices in range) can be attacked. By turning off this feature, the potential victim can be safer from the possibility of being bluesnarfed; although, there are ways to bluesnarf a device that is set to "hidden". For example, bruteforce can be used to guess the device's MAC address. However, since Bluetooth uses a 48-bit unique MAC Address, there are 281,474,976,710,656 possible addresses to guess from. Because bluesnarfing is an invasion of privacy, it is illegal in many countries.
