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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]

#81

Post by pxeger1 »

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)

> this capability was leaked

I think the policy Harris is referring to is based on the _risk_ of something like this - it is easy to imagine wireless devices being vulnerable and enabling this capability - rather than being based on definitive existence of this capability.

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

#82

Post by amelius »

stefan_ wrote: post #10
dijit wrote: post #3

And everyone got mad at OpenBSD for refusing to develop bluetooth. It’s a messy standard and we shouldn’t be surprised that the race to the bottom has left some major gaps.. though Sony WH1000’s are premium tier hardware and they have no real excuses.. I always wondered how people could justify the growth of the bluetooth headphone market in such a way.. Everyone seems to use bluetooth headphones exclusively (in Swed…

This is not a Bluetooth issue. The chip manufacturer Airoha just felt it acceptable to ship a wireless debug interface that allows reading the SoC memory with no authentication whatsoever, enabled in retail customer builds. They are just not a serious company (which is why their security email didn't work, either).

I mean, most companies have security last on their budget list.

It tells more about human nature than about a company.

This can only be fixed systemically by huge fines and/or imprisonment. Otherwise the temptation of taking the risk to neglect security is too strong.

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

#83

Post by mjevans »

barbazoo wrote: post #80
p0w3n3d wrote: post #4

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

I just don’t know a single real person that still wants to use wired earphones with their phone. To me it’s the same as complaining that an artist only has CDs, not records.

I want to use the extremely simple and reliable direct interface and inexpensive cheap earphones and patch cables that I can buy in any reasonable electronics store for low markup. They are all passive components.

Adding an external sound card introduces variables outside of manufacture control, the quality, latency, and drive power all at the mercy of some random integrator.

My phone is easily thick enough to accommodate a 3.5mm port, and it can't be that difficult to waterproof such a jack, which should also make reasonable cleaning easy if it's ever required.

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

#84

Post by denysvitali »

janez2 wrote: post #77
denysvitali wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you have a tracking "si=..." parameter in the youtube link

Too late to edit. I missed that, sorry!

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

#85

Post by dweekly »

makeitdouble wrote: post #75
ricardobeat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jacks are a physical impediment for slim phones. An adapter costs $3 if you still want it. It’s not a bad trade.

I see the point for ultra slim phones. Except the only phones that are slim enough to have their thickest point thinner than that have only started to come up recently. Imagine the same argument for USB-C: at some point phones will be too slim to allow for that port, should every maker start dropping it right now ? That would be nonsense. On adapters, it's no panacea: you still want the USB port available. Split adap…

On slimness: wouldn't an alternative implementation be to "do the Magic Mouse" and put the USB C port on the back of the phone instead of the edge? Alternatively I could imagine MagSafe alignment / charging magnets plus an NFC like inductive communication (or contact pads) to allow for a range of "snap on" peripherals for phone backs that could be implemented on devices thinner than a USB C port.

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

#86

Post by amarshall »

ricardobeat wrote: post #61
makeitdouble wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The jacks are a physical impediment for slim phones. An adapter costs $3 if you still want it. It’s not a bad trade.

Maybe, but Apple doesn’t make them thinner anyway so the argument is invalid. iPhone 6S with headphone jack: 7.1mm thick. iPhone 17 is 7.95mm thick.

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

#87

Post by balou23 »

denysvitali wrote: post #21
dijit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people would be justified in making the argument that bluetooth has existed for at least 20 years and thus is the established battle tested protocol.

Yeah, but Bluetooth spec changed a lot over the years (3000+ pages) and the certification price is rather expensive. There's an interesting article from Wired [1] about this, although some interesting comments from the engineers working on BT stacks are far more interesting. It seems like most of the manufacturers do not create spec-compliant devices, and that the tests from the certification are just poor. I'd love…

I'm by no means an expert, but I've recently implemented a small BLE based IoT device, and had a look at the security/privacy of a medical BLE device.

Some points:

* there's a real lack of quality, up-to-date documentation. I would have thought that at least on Linux you'd find some documentation, but most of it seems to be "RTFS".

* BLE is in general very unfamiliar to most developers. There's no client and server, there's central and peripheral. GATT profiles are a mix between TCP connections and binary REST-ish interface.

* Encryption/authentication is possible, but depending on the manufacturer's API/quality of documentation it's not really apparent a. how to select a secure connection method b. how to even check if and which authentication/encryption was chosen

* Coming from the previous point, many BLE devices have the same generic GATT profiles, sometimes with the same sample data. This looks like a lot of BLE devices just copy&pasted sample code from the manufacturer and added the minimal changes "to make it work"

* It's probably really easy to do passive/active fingerprinting to find out the manufacturer and/or chip version used in a device. Default services, ordering of advertising options etc

* Many BLE devices are not conformant. Uninitialised name fields with garbage in them ("Device Name: WHOOP\020��=u5״\023n"), manufacturers using random identifiers that clearly don't belong to them

* when doing passive BLE sniffing: the biggest obstacle isn't getting data. It's how to filter it. One of the most useful filters of the nRF Connect app for android is to filter out all advertisement packages for apple and ms devices, to cut down the overwhelming amount of such devices

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

#88

Post by cyberrock »

aziaziazi wrote: post #62
watermelon0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume that most people wouldn't want to get back to wired headphones. Transition period was definitely rough, but nowadays bluetooth headphones are substantially better than they were in the past, and it's quite freeing to not have to deal with wires. There are definitely benefits to wired headphones, such as better audio quality and no battery life to worry about, but for those cases there are USB-C DACs.

Brand new devices' batteries are awesome but wear off and need to be changed at some point, if A) the device is designed to let you do that and B) the battery is still in production. You don't really own a wireless headphone. You can see it as a rent, or an ownership that loose its capability when in use.

It's not like wired earbuds/headphones are invincible either. I've had a few wired ones lost due to cable damage, which constitutes more casualties than my wireless inventory, including noticeable charge loss. Of course, there are a lot more cheap wired options with replaceable cables now, thanks to Moondrop and gang.

I really wish the debate was more than jack vs Bluetooth, and more wired fans would consider supporting devices with multiple USB-C ports. Yeah, Sony still puts a jack on Xperias, but most audiophiles note that it's driven by Snapdragon's mediocre integrated DAC, possibly because Sony doesn't want it to compete with Walkmans. Yeah, Valve puts a jack on the Steam Deck, but SD OLED's jack has interference issues that users need to fix with electrical tape or loosening screws. If these devices had two USB ports, then it would be easy to use a better DAC with no interference issues (while also charging with a cable attached to the other port). Having a second USB port would increase device life, and tie wired earbuds/headphones to a more durable standard that's actively developed and backed by legislation. We know this is possible for phones because ASUS ROG Phone has 2 USB ports.

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

#89

Post by Rygian »

wat10000 wrote: post #79
makeitdouble wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They’re just responding to the market. The vast majority of people don’t care about this. Personally, I’d rather have two minutes more battery life than a headphone jack. It’s annoying to have non-mainstream preferences in an area where economies of scale mean every product needs to have mass market appeal. But you might as well complain about the tide coming in.

Do you have a source that supports your claim, that the market asked for 3.5 mm jacks to go away?

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

#90

Post by Rygian »

swores wrote: post #2

I don't have time right now to watch the video and will be coming back to do so later, but here's a couple of snippets from the text on that page that made me want to bother watching (either they're overhyping it, or it sounds interesting and significant) > The identified vulnerabilities may allow a complete device compromise. We demonstrate the immediate impact using a pair of current-generation headphones. We also…

Here's an excerpt from [1]:

> Step 1: Connect (CVE-20700/20701) The attacker is in physical proximity and silently connects to a pair of headphones via BLE or Classic Bluetooth.

> Step 2: Exfiltrate (CVE-20702) Using the unauthenticated connection, the attacker uses the RACE protocol to (partially) dump the flash memory of the headphones.

> Step 3: Extract Inside that memory dump resides a connection table. This table includes the names and addresses of paired devices. More importantly, it also contains the Bluetooth Link Key. This is the cryptographic secret that a phone and headphones use to recognize and trust each other.

> Note: Once the attacker has this key, they no longer need access to the headphones.

> Step 4: Impersonate The attacker’s device now connects to the targets phone, pretending to be the trusted headphones. This involves spoofing the headphones Bluetooth address and using the extracted link-key.

> Once connected to the phone the attacker can proceed to interact with it from the privileged position of a trusted peripheral.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454740

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