Bypassing Passkey Authentication in Bluetooth Low Energy

Tomas Rosa

Paper 2013/309

Bypassing Passkey Authentication in Bluetooth Low Energy

Tomas Rosa

Abstract

This memo describes new cryptographic weakness of the passkey-based pairing of Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth Smart). The vulnerability discussed here extends the set of possible attacking scenarios that were already elaborated before by Mike Ryan at Shmoocon 2013. Instead of the passive sniffing attack on pairing secrets, we show how an active fraudulent Responder can gracefully bypass passkey authentication, despite it being possibly based on even one-time generated PIN.

Note: Improved formatting and some typos were corrected.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown status
Keywords: Bluetooth Low Energy Authentication
Contact author(s): tomas rosa96 @ gmail com
History: 2014-04-23: revised; 2013-05-25: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2013/309
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2013/309,
      author = {Tomas Rosa},
      title = {Bypassing Passkey Authentication in Bluetooth Low Energy},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2013/309},
      year = {2013},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/309}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/309}
}