Generic device naming

BR/EDR

BLE

Bluetooth devices can publicly broadcast their name and related data without requiring authentication or authorization. This name may reveal information about the device type, the user, or even include identifiers such as the MAC address or a unique ID. To reduce unnecessary exposure, devices should use a generic name that discloses only the minimum required information.

Revealing identifiable details enables correlation with a specific device or user, facilitating targeted attacks and creating privacy risks by allowing the device to be uniquely identified and tracked at a particular time and location.

Description

The device name may appear during discovery, in BLE announcements or in Inquiry responses, or by requesting it with a HCI_Remote_Name_Request message.

In the first case, the name can simply be found during the discovery process, so any Bluetooth application will be useful to display it. However, some devices do not send the name in the discovery packets, so it will be necessary to actively request it.

For this second case, a connection is established with the device and the name is requested with the HCI command HCI_Remote_Name_Request.

The name obtained in this way must not contain data indicating the purpose of the device or personal data of its user.

Related resources

To obtain the name in the manner described above, the following resources may be useful:

Example case

We will use Wireshark with BTVS (btvs.exe -Mode wireshark) (btvs.exe -Mode wireshark) to capture packets for analysis.

Upon opening Wireshark, packets from nearby devices’ advertisements are received. Some devices may include data in their advertisement packets, such as the device name field value L600474.

The name indicates to a potential attacker the existence of this device and may even provide the device model.