New 'Spectra' Attack Breaks the Separation Between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (zdnet.com) 8
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Academics from Germany and Italy say they developed a new practical attack that breaks the separation between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies running on the same device, such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Called Spectra, this attack works against "combo chips," specialized chips that handle multiple types of radio wave-based wireless communications, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE, and others. More particularly, the Spectra attack takes advantage of the coexistence mechanisms that chipset vendors include with their devices. Combo chips use these mechanisms to switch between wireless technologies at a rapid pace. [The new Spectra attack allows attackers to break the barrier between these technologies to launch denial-of-service (DoS), arbitrary code execution (ACE), or information disclosure attacks.] Additional details are not available, but the research team plans to provide a technical rundown during a virtual session at the Black Hat security conference in August. An academic paper will also be available at that time.
So much for contact tracing apps (Score:1, Funny)
As the man with the cat on his lap smiles. "Number 6: are you saying that all the covid victim has to do is shut off their bluetooth or go into airplane mode to save battery power and our system to kill this virus will suddenly be useless.?"
Who knows, just maybe a masked man might though. Certainly not the one without a mask.
Bond (Score:3)
We have spectre, now spectra, nice name for a sequel. I guess the names are appropriate considering we have this James Bond Movie Spectre (wikipedia) [wikipedia.org]
Bluetooth always made me nervous and I told everyone I know to disable it, some even listened. Another reason for me to get a tin foil hat
Re: (Score:2)
Watch out, you might be targeted for speculative execution next.
I'll share my wisdom ... (Score:2)
... in August.