It was only a matter of time before someone released a Netstumbler-like scanner for Bluetooth devices. Today, BlueScanner, a Windows-based Bluetooth scanner, was made available for download by Network Chemistry. The free scanner works with commonly available Bluetooth adapters and users can now “stumble around” with their laptops and find vulnerable phones, PDAs and computers.
Every ten seconds, BlueScanner scans radio frequencies for Bluetooth devices. The devices can be sorted by location, type and service. The program can categorize devices into types such PDAs, Cell-phones, Headsets. In addition, BlueScanner will discover most of the available services on the device.
Network Chemistry, a manufacturer of wireless detection and remediation devices, released the software to increase awareness about Bluetooth security. Brian de Haaf, Vice-President of product management and marketing at Network Chemistry said, “Looking back five to ten years ago, people thought the same thing about 802.11b wireless. That lack of knowledge is the same thing we are seeing with Bluetooth.
More details at TG Daily.
At first I was trying to decide if this had any real purpose besides alerting people to the security holes in leaving Bluetooth on all the time … and, really, it doesn’t. Unlike something that searches for Wi-Fi networks (so you can surf … as well as hack), this wouldn’t be useful for anything besides hacking … you gotta admit, there are probably illicit versions of this type of software already out there. It’s good to get something like this out legally to get people thinking about it.
