Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#131

Post by slau » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #117

rplnt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice the difference in color when you do that. As the other comment pointed out, it only disconnects devices. Apple makes it hard for their users to disable bluetooth (or gps) so features like airtag work well. You are sacrificing your battery life (and I guess privacy and security) for the ecosystem to work.

Google won't let you use GPS for maps without also turning on wifi for similar reasons I guess. It does make it more accurate but shouldn't be required.

Wasn’t there this thing that Google collected a list of SSIDs using their Google Maps cars, and that gave them “good enough” geolocation using passive WiFi scanning, which was much less battery intensive and faster than GPS?

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#132

Post by stavros » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

jtc331 wrote: post #130

stavros wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the notion that wires are less reliable than wireless extremely contrary to my own experience.

That’s not what the parent said. The wired connection itself is better, but it has the tradeoff of physical wear and tear and ports that break.

Right, but I count both as reliability, and while I've had wireless connections be flaky tons of times, I haven't had a physical port break yet.

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#133

Post by tungah » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

This is great news now that the industry phased out physical audio connection on phones in favor of wireless. Good job, guys.

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#134

Post by mmsc » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

diebeforei485 wrote: post #29

3np wrote: post #2

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-45866 https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/12/msg0001... https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2023-12-01 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT214036 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT214035

Disappointingly, this hasn't been fixed on the prior versions iOS 16 / macOS 13.

I don't really understand how Apple can say they still support these older devices when there are known vulnerabilities which they don't patch. I just wrote something similar: https://joshua.hu/apple-ios-patched-unpatched-vulnerabilitie...

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#135

Post by teddyh » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

exikyut wrote: post #25

This doesn't mention Windows at all. That sounds great on the surface, but it would be really helpful to understand why Windows is not actually at fault so I can better measure the risk profile. For example, knowing that the Windows Bluetooth stack has the architectural equivalent of BlueZ's `ClassicBondedOnly=false` would be really helpful to know; that would tell me to keep an eye out for it being `true` in environ…

> knowing that the Windows Bluetooth stack has the architectural equivalent of BlueZ's `ClassicBondedOnly=false`

Did you mean “ClassicBondedOnly=true”?

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#136

Post by acdha » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

360MustangScope wrote: post #112

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's a popular trope on HN to say nothing on Windows ever works but anecdotally I've been using Bluetooth on windows for over 10 years now from 7 to 11, and never had any issues whatsoever that were related to Windows itself. The only issues I have are Bluetooth disappears after wake from sleep which after research appears to be due to buggy firmware of the Mediatek network card installed in the laptop and not…

I’ve had a ton issues on Windows with Bluetooth and I know it’s not the hardware because on Linux it works fine. My Xbox Series controller is the biggest issue. For instance will not automatically reconnect when I pair it the first time and then disconnect. On the next turn on of the controller, it never finds the PC and connects. Windows then has no push for me to press to connect. I have to delete the controller an…

> I’ve had a ton issues on Windows with Bluetooth and I know it’s not the hardware because on Linux it works fine.

This isn’t enough to tell you it’s not the hardware: you’d still need to check that it’s not, say, Linux being more tolerant of errors or not supporting a particular feature that the other stack is using. I know at least one person who had some long rant like that about audio, and then updated their Linux distribution to find that the newer bluez failed the same way.

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#137

Post by vldo » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #84

sumuyuda wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to create custom shortcuts to disable WiFi and Bluetooth after Apple made the ones from Control Center useless.

Is it possible to do for Location as well? Last time I tried to search for it, it really wasn't possible except through Siri somehow.

I made one to open locations in settings via open URL: prefs:root=Privacy&path=LOCATION

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#138

Post by vldo » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

DougBTX wrote: post #110

rplnt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad iOS makes it very hard to disable bluetooth. Android was swipe+click, iOS it's swipe, two long presses, two clicks. Or you can type it, but that's obviously more clicks (though possibly faster). I used to make the effort when I switched from Android, but I already gave up...

> Too bad iOS makes it very hard to disable bluetooth. Depending on whether you have the Settings icon on your Home Screen, that’s three taps (Settings -> Bluetooth -> Off). Not even any scrolling.

You can make a shortcut with the action Toggle and set Bluetooth

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#139

Post by meandmycode » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #92

The vulnerabilities work by tricking the Bluetooth host state-machine into pairing with a fake keyboard without user-confirmation. The underlying unauthenticated pairing mechanism is defined in the Bluetooth specification, and implementation-specific bugs expose it to the attacker. Why would you want to pair silently? Could someone provide more details on the intended purpose of the faulty mechanism?

It's just an older design from a more innocent time, newer specifications don't allow this, but to maximise compatibility Bluetooth stacks left the new behaviour off.

Re: Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS

#140

Post by acdha » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:32 PM UTC

beebeepka wrote: post #121

Bluetooth is the gift that keeps on giving. Not sure why my Ubuntu insists on enabling it on every boot, at least on my hardware. Good thing PC peripherals moved away from this junk. It was fascinating watching Logitech sell 300 euro BT keyboard with literally a second of lag, or "high end" mice with 500ms or more. Hell, I barely use my PS5 controller because it sucks ass compared to my old Xbox 360 pad. Lag, lag, la…

That’s considerably worse than most people experience - keyboard latency is normally under 15ms - and I think that’s part of the problem there: if you live somewhere with a lot of congestion from other devices, poorly shielded microwave ovens, etc. you have a legitimately terrible experience but it’s not common enough for it to actually get fixed since it doesn’t impact sales.