Cincinnati Networking Services - Hacking Cell Phones Via Blue Tooth

By Author: Jose Matheny
Total Articles: 8
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Blue tooth has become extremely popular these days and has become a data transfer technology. There a lot of features that Blue tooth offers such as transferring files between a mobile hand held and a computer, streaming audio and voice calls, and much more.

Sometimes we may not realize that walking around with Blue tooth enabled on our mobile phone leaves us easily accessible to hackers. Hackers can easily connect and manipulate your phone simply by using a Blue tooth connection.

These days most new cell phones have Blue tooth by default which is useful for things like wireless headsets, in-car connectivity and many. May be Blue tooth has proved to be a very useful tool for cell phones, but we are unaware of the fact that it opens doors to hackers.

Blue tooth provides a perfect entry point for manipulation. Cell phones carry a lot of private data these days; it makes Blue tooth attacks very easy and very scary too. Walking around with the Blue tooth function enabled and visible does create ...
... an easy way for the hackers to hack your phone. Many people turn on Blue tooth to use a headset or for any other purpose and then simply forget to turn it back off when they are done. This is why Blue tooth hacking has become so prevalent and so easy to do.

When Blue tooth is enabled on your device, it is very easy for another Blue tooth device to find out that you are visible or you are available within that range. This feature makes using Blue tooth consumers very simple and straightforward, but also lets hackers know which ones to target very easily.

A hacker can download some special software and install it on a laptop or notebook. He can then install a Blue tooth antenna to that computer and put everything in a notepad. Now, what the hacker does is, he walks around public places where a lot of people are concentrated, and let the computer running in his bag do all the work while no one has any idea what's happening.

The software on the computer will scan the nearby surroundings of the hacker for active Blue tooth connections. After it finds them, the hacker can perform various functions without the knowledge of anyone. The entire process is automated for the hacker. The hacker collects the data and then manipulates the same.

After the hacker's software finds and connects to a vulnerable Blue tooth-enabled cell phone, it can do various things like download address book information, photos, calendars, SIM card details and also make long-distance phone calls. There is software freely available that's made specifically to attack cell phones via Blue tooth connections.

Blue snarfing is the term associated with downloading all information from a hacked device. It also allows the hacker to send a corruption code to completely shut the phone down and make it unusable.

Few ways to protect your cell phone from blue tooth hacking:

What you need to keep in mind is that you always set your Blue tooth devices to non-discoverable mode. Keep it away until you actually need to transfer data. Also make sure that the device with which you are pairing is a trusted one. It is not a right idea to accept pairing requests from just about anyone. If you happen to pair your phone with a hacker's computer, then all your data will be at risk. Beware of the password that you are using. Set a difficult PIN number. Keep changing your passwords in regular intervals.

Author Bio:
My name is Jose Matheny and I am IT Systems Engineer with over 10 Year Experience; L&C Sunshine Technology Services was started with the business fundamentals that a client should be dealt with on a one on one personal level, not treated like an account number.