Researchers have uncovered critical vulnerabilities affecting Bluetooth chipsets found in more than two dozen different audio products. These security issues impact a large variety of devices from ten well-known vendors, including popular speakers and headphones. Prominent brands such as Sony, Bose, Marshall, and Jabra are confirmed to have multiple products currently affected by these flaws. The list of impacted hardware includes not only consumer earbuds and headphones but also various professional wireless microphones available today.
Three specific vulnerabilities were disclosed by ERNW cybersecurity researchers at a major security conference held recently in Germany. These specific flaws allow a skilled attacker to completely bypass the standard authentication protocols on vulnerable Bluetooth connections. Exploiting these issues permits an unauthorized actor to read and write directly to the device’s memory and flash memory. An attacker within Bluetooth range could potentially extract a user’s call history, contacts, and other very sensitive information. The most severe vulnerability carries a high CVSS score, enabling full device takeover without requiring any prior user interaction.
This widespread vulnerability presents a significant security risk for a vast number of unsuspecting consumers across the entire globe.
The security researchers demonstrated how to hijack the connection between a phone and an audio device to issue commands. This allows a malicious actor to secretly initiate phone calls to an arbitrary number without the owner’s explicit knowledge. They were also able to successfully eavesdrop on private conversations by activating the microphone on the connected mobile phone. Furthermore, the device’s firmware could be rewritten, creating a wormable exploit that propagates across multiple vulnerable nearby devices.
Attackers can even extract Bluetooth link keys from the flash memory to impersonate a trusted audio device permanently.
Despite the seriousness of these flaws, real-world attacks are considered complex and require a very high technical skillset. The absolute necessity of physical proximity confines these specific attacks to carefully selected, high-value targets like some journalists. Chipset manufacturer Airoha has released an updated software development kit which incorporates the necessary security mitigations for vendors. However, many device manufacturers have not yet distributed the required firmware patches to all of their affected end users. Users should monitor their device manufacturer’s websites for updates to protect themselves from these potential remote spying threats.
Reference:
