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> “This defense can be rolled out incrementally, requiring only software modification on at least one widely-used Bluetooth Low Energy chipset,” said Hadi Givehchian, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student in the UC San Diego Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “But in order to deploy this defense widely, we need to partner with Bluetooth chip manufacturers.”

Essentially, this is useless. It doesn’t apply to most chipsets and would require changing the firmware on existing beacon hardware. The chip manufacturers would have put this in the hardware if they wanted it.



> The chip manufacturers would have put this in the hardware if they wanted it.

High-volume device customers of chip manufacturers can make it a requirement, e.g. if their marketing and business model support privacy.


You have to realize even juggernauts like Apple are unable to influence other juggernauts like Broadcom.

4 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907591 :

>Broadcom bluetooth/wifi chips ran out of firmware hot patch ram slots long time ago. Company seems to be too cheap to respin the rom mask with all the fixes baked in. From what I remember even brand new iphone x ships with no room for BT firmware patching.

>RECON 2019 - Reversing and Exploiting Broadcom Bluetooth (Jiska, Dennis Mantz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Mi8_9ABCc

>35C3 - Dissecting Broadcom Bluetooth (jiska mantz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_nI9ok7iQg




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