Hey, Turn Bluetooth Off When You're Not Using It

You intuitively know why you should bolt your doors when you leave the house and add some sort of authentication for your smartphone. That includes an attack called BlueBorne, announced this week by the security firm Armis, which would allow any affected device with Bluetooth turned on to be attacked through a series of vulnerabilities. It’s a hop, skip, and a jump to start doing bad stuff.” BlueBorne As overall device security improves, researchers and attackers alike have turned to ancillary features and components to find ways in. But in addition to endangering core devices such as smartphones and PCs, BlueBorne has implications for the billions of Bluetooth-equipped internet of things devices in the world including smart TVs, speakers, and even smart lightbulbs. "We wanted get the research community on board with this, because it didn’t take us a long time to find these bugs, one thing kind of led to another and we found eight really severe vulnerabilities,” says Ben Seri, the head of research at Armis.