BlueID: A practical system for Bluetooth device identification

Jun Huang, Wahhab Albazrqaoe, Guoliang Xing

Research output: Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary WorksRGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)peer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of Bluetooth technology, identity management of Bluetooth devices remains a significant challenge because the MAC address and name of Bluetooth device are easy to forge. In this paper, we present BlueID - a practical system that identifies Bluetooth devices by fingerprinting their clocks. Previous approaches to clock fingerprinting exclusively rely on the timestamps carried by packet headers, which can be easily spoofed by hacking the user-space device driver. In comparison, BlueID performs clock fingerprinting based on the temporal feature of Bluetooth frequency hopping, which is impossible to forge without a customized baseband. Due to the proprietary nature of chipset firmware that implements baseband on commodity Bluetooth devices, BlueID will significantly raise the bar of identity spoofing. Moreover, BlueID employs simple yet efficient techniques to detect and differentiate low power Bluetooth transmissions from a distance, making it suitable for mobile applications like energy efficient localization and tracking. BlueID is implemented on a low cost wireless development platform and extensively evaluated based on 56 commodity devices. We show that BlueID can detect Bluetooth radios from 100m away, and identify different devices with high accuracy, short delay, and low computational overhead. Although this paper focuses on Bluetooth, the design of BlueID is general and can be applied to other frequency hopping based wireless systems. © 2014 IEEE.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIEEE INFOCOM 2014 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications
PublisherIEEE
Pages2849-2857
ISBN (Print)9781479933600
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event33rd IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, IEEE INFOCOM 2014 - Toronto, ON, Canada
Duration: 27 Apr 20142 May 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE INFOCOM
ISSN (Print)0743-166X

Conference

Conference33rd IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, IEEE INFOCOM 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto, ON
Period27/04/142/05/14

Bibliographical note

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