Bluetooth Proximity Badge

ECE 4112 – Spring 2007

Group 18

Soud Laskar & Alan Nix

Overview

Security Statistics Possible Solutions Purpose of the Lab Bluetooth RSSI Lab Overview Movie Issues

Security Statistics

In over 63 percent of identified security breaches, human error was identified as a major, underlying factor.

While 81 percent of passwords are alphanumeric, 28 percent are just lowercase letters plus a single final digit -- and two-thirds of those have the single digit 1.

Human error - not technical malfunction - is the most significant cause of IT security breaches in the public and private sectors.

Possible Solutions

Biometrics Fingerprint Scanning Retina Scanning Vascular Scanning Voice Recognition

Although fingerprint scanners have become relatively mainstream, they still don’t provide the best security, and the other forms of recognition are still a few years off.

Purpose

The idea behind our lab was to create an affordable proximity badge using a Bluetooth enabled phone. This would mean that whenever the user leaves the proximity of his/her computer, the computer automatically locks. The program also has the ability to require that the phone be in range in order for someone to use the computer, but for the purpose of our lab this isn’t required.

BluetoothBluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. It provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.

RSSI

This means that the RSSI is often related to the distance of the Bluetooth device.

Other devices which may interfere with the overall quality of the connection don’t necessarily affect RSSI.

RSSI is an acronym for Received Signal Strength Indication. RSSI is a measurement of the received radio signal strength (energy integral, not the quality).

Lab Overview

The steps for the lab are as follows: Use Linux “hcitools” to scan for nearby Bluetooth

devices. Find the MAC address of the device you want to

use as the proximity badge. Plug that address into the script that we have

written. Execute the script and try it out.

Movie

Let’s watch the movie!

Issues

Someone could clone your Bluetooth MAC address – However, it wouldn’t do them much good.

If your Bluetooth device died or had a spotty connection, it could become a real annoyance.

Questions

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