The esteemed
Dr. Jerry Pournelle posted in
Saturday's Mail section of his
web log (surely one of the first web logs, IIRC, and one most useful) a link to a demonstration of long range Bluetooth.
The testers demonstrated they could read from and write to an unmodded off-the-shelf
Sony Ericsson T610 cellphone, using
a laptop and other off-the-shelf gear, from a kilometer away. Yes, those are ideal conditions, but it does demonstrate that you can get much further than the design spec of 10 meters, and do so without being seen.
So? This demonstration shows that the fellow across the room or on the next block can be intercepting your transmissions, which illustrates the
superiority of PDAphones from a security standpoint. No Bluetooth, no security risk from Bluetooth.
Since the T610 is
Bluesnarfable,as are many other popular Bluetooth phones, and the
Bluejacking explots continue, relying on a Bluetooth connection to send secure data from a Bluetoothed cellphone can no longer be seen as secure.
If you want any level of security in your communications, Bluetooth IMHO is no longer a viable option, just as GSM itself is no longer a viable option (as its encryption has been broken, and recording the transmissions is simple for anyone with a
computer-controlled radio and a program to slice up the time-division-multiplexed transmissions and paste each thread back together.
You want private wireless communications? Use a CDMA-based PDAphone or laptop, or at very least cable from your PDA or laptop to the CDMA cellphone.
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