Today, almost all smartphones and tablets have Bluetooth and WiFi.
Although the technologies are distinct and each protocol has its own security, they often share hardware resources.
This sharing of resources, which serves to make devices more energy efficient, can however serve as a gateway to launch attacks and obtain privileges supposedly inaccessible.
A group of security researchers from the University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Brescia, CNIT and the Secure Mobile Networking Lab, have thus demonstrated that it is possible to steal passwords and manipulate the traffic of a WiFi chip via the Bluetooth components of a device.
According to them, this problem affects millions of computers around the world.
Researchers indicate that attackers could use this flaw to execute malicious code or steal passwords.
To exploit these vulnerabilities, the researchers executed code on the Bluetooth chip.
In this way, they were able to perform lateral attacks on the other chips in the device using shared memory resources.
How to protect yourself from these vulnerabilities?
While some flaws can be fixed by a software update, others can only be fixed by a hardware review, so software updates will not be able to fix all identified security issues.
Users can, however, reduce the likelihood of being affected by regularly updating their devices.
Most manufacturers will release fixes for these flaws.
Another tip is to remove unnecessary or infrequently used Bluetooth pairings.
Finally, it is advisable to remove WiFi networks that are not necessary.
In public places, it is also better to use mobile networks rather than unknown WiFi.
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