Dangers Of bluetooth devices.Businesses are leaving themselves wide open to fraudulent The description of a willful act commenced with the Specific Intent to deceive or cheat, in order to cause some financial detriment to another and to engender personal financial gain. and criminal activity if they fail to take appropriate steps to protect their employee's mobile phones, hand-held devices (such as Blackberries or PDAs) and laptops warns the Risk Management and Forensic & Investigation practices at business and financial adviser Grant Thornton. Looking at the mobile phone market in isolation, there are currently around 50 million phones in the UK so the chances of fraudulent activity occurring increases exponentially ex·po·nen·tial adj. 1. Of or relating to an exponent. 2. Mathematics a. Containing, involving, or expressed as an exponent. b. as the demand for such devices increases. Key areas for concern include: * Bluetooth pairing attacks whereby an attacker gains full access to the memory content of a phone/laptop/PDA at the point of first communication, gaining the pin code and therefore becoming a trusted device * BlueSnarfing attacks where the hacker A person who writes programs in assembly language or in system-level languages, such as C. The term often refers to any programmer, but its true meaning is someone with a strong technical background who is "hacking away" at the bits and bytes. gains access to phonebook and calendar information and can divert di·vert v. di·vert·ed, di·vert·ing, di·verts v.tr. 1. To turn aside from a course or direction: Traffic was diverted around the scene of the accident. 2. calls to their own phone * BlueBug attacks where the hacker has full access to the device and can initiate calls (such as premium rate phone calls), text messages etc from the victim's phone. Grant Thornton's Risk Management Services practice says: "Businesses are leaving themselves open to the possibilities of fraudulent activity, particularly as there are a number of very simple precautions precautions Infectious disease The constellation of activities intended to minimize exposure to an infectious agent; precautions imply that the isolation of an infected Pt is optional, but not mandatory. that can be undertaken to ensure that the likelihood of an attack is minimised, such as disabling dis·a·ble tr.v. dis·a·bled, dis·a·bling, dis·a·bles 1. To deprive of capability or effectiveness, especially to impair the physical abilities of. 2. Law To render legally disqualified. the bluetooth signal on your device when it's not in use." |
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