Linking Bluetooth LE & Classic and Implications for Privacy-Preserving Bluetooth-Based Protocols

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy advertisements are increasingly used for proximity privacy-preserving protocols. We investigate information leakage from BLE advertisements. Our analysis, among other things, reveals that the design of today’s Bluetooth chips enables the linking of BLE advertisements to Bluetooth Classic (BTC) frames, and to a globally unique identifier (BDADDR). We demonstrate that the inference of the BDADDR from BLE advertisements is robust achieving over 90% reliability across apps, mobile devices, density of devices, and tens of meters away from the victims. We discuss the implications of current chipsets vulnerability on privacy-preserving protocols. The attack, for instance, reveals the BDADDR of devices of infected users of contact-tracing apps. We also discuss how the vulnerability can lead to de-anonymization of victims. Furthermore, current mobile devices do not allow selective disabling of BTC independently of BLE which renders simple countermeasures impractical. We developed several mitigations for the Android OS and the Bluetooth stack and demonstrate their efficacy.