Articles of Interest
PC Touch Services, Inc.
Short-Range Wireless Technologies: Bluetooth
October 30, 2006
Author: Wilson Louis-Elias, MS-CIS
Company: PC Touch Services, Inc.
Contact: P.O. Box 14202
Hauppauge NY 11788
Tel: 631-676-2282
Title: Short-Range Wireless Technologies: Bluetooth
Type: Article
Date: October 30, 2006
During the deployment of an application, we
determined that the addition of another wireless means of data
transmission would reduce the burden of exchanging data on
employees. As a result, we enabled Bluetooth wireless technology in
all laptops. We would like to take this opportunity to describe the
tool and briefly discuss some relevant security issues for those of
us who may not be very familiar with the short-range wireless
technologies. After reading this article, you should have a very
good idea about, Bluetooth, its sister technology Infrared Data
Association (IrDA), wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), and the future World
Interoperability for Microwave Access, Inc. (WiMAX) technology. We
will, especially, discuss the Bluetooth wireless technology as a
medium of data transmission. We will also tell you why you may not
be using the same technology to transfer all documents while working
in an open environment.
Short-range Wireless Technologies
Any attempt to discuss all of the short-range
wireless technologies here would produce a longer document than we
would like to present to our readers in this article. Such
discussion is beyond the scope of this article. For the sake of
naming some of them, short-range wireless technologies include
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IrDA, HomeRF, RFID, ZigBee, and Ultra-Wideband.
Currently, the three main short-range wireless technologies are
Bluetooth, IrDA, and Wi-Fi (Diviney, 2003). Let us briefly describe
the latter two technologies prior to discussing Bluetooth and its
relevancy to the employees.
IrDA
In the early 1990s, the computing industry wanted
to replace wires that connect computers together. During the course
of their pursuit, players went much further than their initial
goals. They authored the Infrared Data Association (IrDA)
specifications. IrDA transmits data through the use of “invisible
pulses of light… Devices that communicate using infrared must be
within sight of each other” (SNAC, 2006). IrDA transmission rate can
reach throughput of as much as 4 Mbit/s.
Wi-Fi
Most of us are very familiar with wireless
fidelity (Wi-Fi) in form of wireless routers that establish access
point (AP) based upon the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers’ IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n standards. The Wi-Fi Alliance was
launched in 1999, after this technology’s apparition “to certify
implementation and alleviate consumers’ interoperability concerns”
(Diviney, 2003). As many of us know, consumers can basically buy any
router on the market and it will interface with basically any
wireless network interface card (NIC) on the system. Security
vulnerability was very high in the beginning, but encryption
applications have considerably improved the security issues. Wi-Fi
transmission rate can reach throughput of as much as 4.5 Mbit/s.
Bluetooth
While IrDA requires line of sight and Wi-Fi
creates access-point, Bluetooth “features some security mechanisms
that provides confidentiality and integrity” (SNAC, 2006) to data
transmission.
Bluetooth was the initiative of five major players
in the computing and wireless communications industries that include
Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, Intel, and Toshiba. Their quest expanded in
1998 to include the concept of connection between personal computers
(PC). Bluetooth technology allows “many independent
point-to-multipoint [in a master-slave relationship] connections in
the same physical space.” A data transmission rate can reach
throughput of as much as 400 Kbit/s.
Bluetooth and Application Security Strength
Bluetooth is relatively a secure wireless means of
communication. For the purpose intended, data was even more secure
because the application encrypts data before transmission. The fact
that Bluetooth is a short-range wireless transmission medium
decreases the possibility of eavesdropping. “To authenticate,
devices […] demonstrate that they know one another’s keys. Most of
all, “to date, the Bluetooth encryption scheme has not been broken”
(Diviney, 2003).
Bluetooth security weakness does not greatly
impact on the way employees performed work. Security risks impact
more on personal digital assistant (PDA) transmission. Those devices
that use Bluetooth technology may require a four-digit pin. Such pin
is weak and can be cracked in just one (1) second according to US
Department of Defense (2005). However, if employees determine that
others suspiciously stick around work area with a device handy, they
have reason to react to their presence.
Bluetooth and Other Documents
The question has been raised about whether
employees can use the same drive, especially created for the
application, to transfer other documents as well. Here is the
challenge we experienced with this question. That drive uses a
wireless shared folder. Once a folder is shared, obviously, almost
anyone with proper skills can browse through it. Placing any
unencrypted document in that folder would make it too easy for
unauthorized users to access it during an intrusion attack. At the
time, Other Documents were not encrypted. Until then, it was
not recommended to use the same drive for any other purpose than the
specific application’s data transmission.
WiMAX
Since we are approaching the end of this article,
it should be clear that this discussion focused more on short-range
wireless technology. We have seen that short-range wireless
technology transmission throughput was fairly slow. On a wide-range
note, the office has used a local telephone company broadband access
in 2006. On an exciting wireless communication note, debates about
IEEE 802.11n devices began since 2004. Devices manufactured under
the IEEE 802.11 sub-standard will allow wireless transmission rate
at throughput even higher than 100 Mbit/s (webopdia.com, 2006). In
brief, there will be other wide-range wireless technologies and the
computing industry is expecting WiMAX to increase throughput
considerably.
WiMAX devices, which will be based on the IEEE
802.16, will “support[.] very high bit rates in both uploading to
and downloading from a base station up to a distance of 30 miles to
handle such services as VoIP, IP connectivity and TDM voice and
data” (webopdia.com, 2006).
Conclusion
We hope this article has not simply informed our
readers about Bluetooth - the short-range wireless technology we
activated on laptops. We made attempts to make the reader aware of
short-range and wide-area wireless communication technologies. We
have also discussed the future of wide-range wireless technology in
WiMAX. The latter is the killer-before-birth of eventual devices
expected to manufacture based upon the IEEE 802.11n. We hope to see
WiMAX bring us better flexible as it relates to mobility.
Reference
Department of Defense. (2005). Mobile And Wireless
Device Addendum To The Wireless: Security technical implementation
guide. Retrieved on October 13, 2006 from
http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/stig/mobile-computing-addendum-v1r1.pdf
Glade Diviney. (2003). An Introduction to
Short-Range Wireless Data Communications. Retrieved on October 13,
2006 from
http://irda.affiniscape.com/associations/2494/files/PublicaSho
Jupitermedia Corporation. (2006). 802.16.
Retrieved on October 13, 2006 from
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/8/802_16.html
Jupitermedia Corporation. (2006). 802.11n.
Retrieved on October 13, 2006 from
http://webopedia.com/TERM/8/802_11n.html
National Security Agency. (2006). Security
Guidance for Deploying IP Telephony Systems. Retrieved on October
13, 2006 from
http://www.nsa.gov/snac/voip/I332-016R-2005.pdf
Wilson Louis-Elias, MS-CIS, EA
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