TY - GEN
T1 - PeriScope
T2 - 17th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security 2022 (ACM ASIACCS 2022)
AU - Zhao, Qingchuan
AU - Zuo, Chaoshun
AU - Blasco, Jorge
AU - Lin, Zhiqiang
N1 - Research Unit(s) information for this publication is provided by the author(s) concerned.
PY - 2022/5
Y1 - 2022/5
N2 - Many IoT devices today talk to each other via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a wireless communication technology often used to exchange data between a paired central and peripheral. These peripheral devices include not only firmware-defined bare-metal peripherals but also mobile application defined peripherals where a mobile app turns a smartphone into a peripheral instead of their usual central role. However, this role reversal increases the attack surface and brings vulnerabilities in bare-metal Bluetooth peripherals to mobile apps where relevant security and privacy have not been well studied. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper presents PeriScope, an automated tool to unveil the security and privacy vulnerabilities at the link layer of app-defined Bluetooth peripherals in the procedures of broadcasting, pairing, and communication by systematically analyzing their companion mobile apps. PeriScope has analyzed 1,160 Bluetooth peripheral apps from Google Play and identified 69.13% of them that broadcast device or personal identifiable information in cleartext, and, in addition, there are 95% pieces of data managed by these apps (e.g., personal health data and digital keys to unlock doors) to exchange with connected devices can be accessed without authentication. Finally, a set of guidelines for secure app-defined Bluetooth peripherals development is also provided.
AB - Many IoT devices today talk to each other via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a wireless communication technology often used to exchange data between a paired central and peripheral. These peripheral devices include not only firmware-defined bare-metal peripherals but also mobile application defined peripherals where a mobile app turns a smartphone into a peripheral instead of their usual central role. However, this role reversal increases the attack surface and brings vulnerabilities in bare-metal Bluetooth peripherals to mobile apps where relevant security and privacy have not been well studied. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper presents PeriScope, an automated tool to unveil the security and privacy vulnerabilities at the link layer of app-defined Bluetooth peripherals in the procedures of broadcasting, pairing, and communication by systematically analyzing their companion mobile apps. PeriScope has analyzed 1,160 Bluetooth peripheral apps from Google Play and identified 69.13% of them that broadcast device or personal identifiable information in cleartext, and, in addition, there are 95% pieces of data managed by these apps (e.g., personal health data and digital keys to unlock doors) to exchange with connected devices can be accessed without authentication. Finally, a set of guidelines for secure app-defined Bluetooth peripherals development is also provided.
KW - bluetooth low energy
KW - iot security
KW - mobile app analysis
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85133163277
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/pubmetrics.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85133163277&origin=recordpage
U2 - 10.1145/3488932.3517410
DO - 10.1145/3488932.3517410
M3 - RGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)
SN - 9781450391405
T3 - ASIA CCS - Proceedings of the ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security
SP - 521
EP - 533
BT - ASIA CCS ’22
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
CY - New York
Y2 - 30 May 2022 through 3 June 2022
ER -