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Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

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Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#31

Post by CharlesW »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #4

Meanwhile all the phones dropping jack because Apple started it. Official reason is to "waterproof phones"

The official reason was, famously and ridiculously, "courage". Apple further explained that space is at a premium, listed the many things competing for that space, and noted that a large, single-purpose legacy connector no longer made sense.

A lot of Apple's strategic choices are driven by products that take 5, 10, or sometimes 20 years to realize. For example, the forthcoming foldable iPhone (and the proving ground for many related decisions, the iPhone Air) was on roadmaps literally a decade before a decision like this reverberates through released products.

Putting a high-quality DAC in a dongle wasn't a terrible solution (many phones with analog jacks have poor ones), and today hundreds of headphones¹ courageously have native USB-C support.

¹ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/usb-c-headphones/ci/...

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#32

Post by IshKebab »

miduil wrote: post #13

Glad this submission is finally receiving upvotes. This was just shown at the 39C3 in Hamburg, few days back. Common (unpached) Bluetooth headsets using Airoha's SoCs can be completely taken over by any unauthenticated bystander with a Linux laptop. (CVE-2025-20700, CVE-2025-20701, CVE-2025-20702) This includes firmware dumps, user preferences, Bluetooth Classic session keys, current playing track, ... > Examples of…

Is this an unintentional vulnerability or is it one of those "we left it open because it's easier and we hoped nobody would notice" kind of things. I mean can you just send a "update to this firmware" command completely unauthenticated and it's like "yep sure"? No signing or anything?

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#33

Post by realusername »

CharlesW wrote: post #31
p0w3n3d wrote: post #4

Meanwhile all the phones dropping jack because Apple started it. Official reason is to "waterproof phones"

The official reason was, famously and ridiculously, "courage". Apple further explained that space is at a premium, listed the many things competing for that space, and noted that a large, single-purpose legacy connector no longer made sense. A lot of Apple's strategic choices are driven by products that take 5, 10, or sometimes 20 years to realize. For example, the forthcoming foldable iPhone (and the proving ground…

Apple is very late to the foldable phones now, not sure that's the best example

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#35

Post by makeitdouble »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #4

Meanwhile all the phones dropping jack because Apple started it. Official reason is to "waterproof phones"

The most frustrating part is when Apple dropped the jack we laughed at the "courage" bit, Apple's given reasons where already seen as bullshit, Samsung had their finger pointing moment.

And it just went on, Apple weathered the critics, the other makers also dropped it, and at some point there was just nowhere to go for anyone still wanted a 3.5 jack with a decent phone.

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#36

Post by K0balt »

petit_robert wrote: post #30
dmd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does audio have to do with this post?

GP seems to mean that if people cared about audio quality, they would not use bluetooth in the first place? Audiophiles tend to have firm stances on what is acceptable or not, I find.

There are also some amazing cables available in the space. Especially the digital cables, they are really amazing.

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#37

Post by bgbntty2 »

miduil wrote: post #13

Glad this submission is finally receiving upvotes. This was just shown at the 39C3 in Hamburg, few days back. Common (unpached) Bluetooth headsets using Airoha's SoCs can be completely taken over by any unauthenticated bystander with a Linux laptop. (CVE-2025-20700, CVE-2025-20701, CVE-2025-20702) This includes firmware dumps, user preferences, Bluetooth Classic session keys, current playing track, ... > Examples of…

Remote audio surveillance probably be accomplished on wired headphones with TEMPEST [0]/Van Eck phreaking [1]. Not sure about which has a better range and which would be stealthier - TEMPEST or the Bluetooth attack. The Bluetooth attack just requires a laptop. Not sure if the TEMPEST attack would require a big antenna.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#38

Post by ycombinary »

denysvitali wrote: post #12
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #8

Haven't watched the video yet, but I think this capability was leaked by VP Kamala Harris during her recent interview with the Late Night Show [0]. She stated she doesn't use wireless headphones because she's been in security meetings and knows they're not safe. [0] https://youtu.be/BD8Nf09z_38 (Timestamp 18:40)

Disclaimer: This comment is not intended to be political - I don't care about the specific party she's part of. Out of all the people I would trust on the matter, Kamala Harris doesn't certainly end up at the top of my list, for reasons such as this one: https://youtu.be/O2SLyBL2kdM?si=Zq-EN8zxj4Y_UCwI You also don't need to be in classified meetings to understand that Bluetooth/ BLE (and specifically the way most ve…

It's essentially a statement about the view of gov security, not about the view of an individual.

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#39

Post by Namidairo »

miduil wrote: post #13

Glad this submission is finally receiving upvotes. This was just shown at the 39C3 in Hamburg, few days back. Common (unpached) Bluetooth headsets using Airoha's SoCs can be completely taken over by any unauthenticated bystander with a Linux laptop. (CVE-2025-20700, CVE-2025-20701, CVE-2025-20702) This includes firmware dumps, user preferences, Bluetooth Classic session keys, current playing track, ... > Examples of…

> Most vendors gave the security researchers either silent treatment or were slow, even after Airoha published fixes. Jabra was one of the positive outlier, Sony unfortunately negatively.

While I don't recall Sony issuing an advisory, I believe the users of their app would have started getting update notifications since they (quietly) released firmware updates.

> This means there is great opportunity for Linux users to control their Bluetooth headsets, which for example is quite nice in an office setting to toggle "hearthrough" when toggling volume "mute" on your machine.

I think most vendors are using custom services with their own UUIDs for settings such as this.

Regardless, I believe there are open client implementations for some of the more popular devices. Gadgetbridge comes to mind in regards to Android, not sure about any Linux equivalent.

Re: Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

#40

Post by quesera »

denysvitali wrote: post #12
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #8

Haven't watched the video yet, but I think this capability was leaked by VP Kamala Harris during her recent interview with the Late Night Show [0]. She stated she doesn't use wireless headphones because she's been in security meetings and knows they're not safe. [0] https://youtu.be/BD8Nf09z_38 (Timestamp 18:40)

Disclaimer: This comment is not intended to be political - I don't care about the specific party she's part of. Out of all the people I would trust on the matter, Kamala Harris doesn't certainly end up at the top of my list, for reasons such as this one: https://youtu.be/O2SLyBL2kdM?si=Zq-EN8zxj4Y_UCwI You also don't need to be in classified meetings to understand that Bluetooth/ BLE (and specifically the way most ve…

> doesn't certainly end up at the top of my list

There hasn't been a POTUS or VPOTUS with a technical background in the last 45 years (Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer). So obviously none of them would be authoritative on such topics.

However the individual in question is not delusional or conspiratorial, and we know for sure that they are receiving advice or restrictions from extremely well-informed sources, so there's every reason to believe they are (lo-fi) repeating that.

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