Bluetooth War Sitting….

So one of the advantages to bringing your laptop with you to a conference is you can do fun things like bring up your wireless sniffer and see what’s out there like say Bluetooth devices!

So two things stand out to me here…

1. I’m surprised that some phones are still discoverable, since people by and large rarely change the default settings on Bluetooth from off to on. When I took this reading from my laptop there were probably 30 people with in the 30 feet of me which is about the maximum distance I can sniff Bluetooth with my laptop. snapshot-2009-06-05-07-00-05

2. The laptop user is just asking for issues… Windows and Mac by default have Bluetooth discovery turned off so someone out there is just flat being a idiot.

a. So while I was typing #2 I saw another Mac pop up…. And here is what my wireless sniffer had to say about that, and the other Mac is close enough that I can see his entire screen. snapshot-2009-06-05-07-10-23

b. So I guess my question is this… is it rude to go up to someone and say “Excuse me but your Bluetooth is showing” Especially on a MAC since you know most MAC users aren’t security minded like PC users are.

c. Also how wise it to have the “Remote Frame Buffer” (aka VNC) service out and advertising on bonjour? Along with Apple file sharing which at this point is really just SAMBA which is really just the open source version of windows file sharing?

I’m not at a IT security confrence but still these are interesting questions for those security minded people / security professionals that have been known to check around the old blog here.

Yes I know you come here… Google Analytic isn’t just for tracking my parents any more.