Case Studies from Fuzzing Bluetooth, WiFi and WiMAX

Abstract

New wireless technologies such as WiMAX, RFID and ZigBee are rapidly being adopted along with existing wire less standards such as Bluetooth and WiFi. Bluetooth and WiFi have already become notorious for severe security shortcomings during their relatively short existence. New vulnerabilities and exploits are reported and demonstrated every week on live, public networks. The credibility of these wireless technologies has been damaged by security incidents, stemming from fundamental problems in requirements gathering, implementation quality and protocol design. Despite boasts of hardened security measures, security researchers and blackhat hackers keep constantly humiliating vendors. What can be done to avoid making the same mistakes all over again with new, emerging wire less technologies such as WiMAX? This paper draw experiences from the past and current problems in Bluetooth and WiFi and describe how fuzzing techniques can be used to assess the security of the available implementations. Quality and reliability improvements in these implementations will lead directly to decreased development and deployment costs, as well as increase public acceptance and ensure faster adoption.