Cybersecurity researchers have warned of vulnerabilities in Bluetooth components and Wi-Fi chips that could lead to massive data breaches.

This was told by specialists from the Darmstadt University of Technology in collaboration with experts from the Secure Mobile Networking Lab. According to the research, vulnerabilities in Bluetooth components of devices can threaten to steal passwords, and manipulation of Wi-Fi chips makes it possible to control traffic.

As you know, smartphones are electronic devices with a system on a chip and separate Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and LTE chips, where each has its own security system. However, all of these components use common resources to optimize the device's energy efficiency: for example, the wireless spectrum or the antenna. Among other things, shared resources can be used as tools for cyberattacks.

To gain access to exploitation of vulnerabilities, researchers had to execute code on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules, after which they were able to perform attacks on other components of the device using shared memory resources.

During the experiment, experts managed to disable smartphones from updates "over the air", as well as steal network passwords and data from chipsets Broadcom, Cypress and Silicon Lab. According to the researchers, the chips from these manufacturers are used in billions of devices.

According to experts, some of the identified vulnerabilities can be eliminated if only changes are made to the design of microcircuits. In other cases, changing device firmware can do a lot of damage to device optimization.

bbabo.Net