BLUESNIPER


Bluesniper is the name given to a Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver designed to operate over vastly greater distances than conventional Bluetooth systems due primarily, to a modified antenna. The Bluetooth "Sniper gun" is able to communicate with another Bluetooth device from a distance of up to 1 kilometre away from the target Bluetooth device.

The first public instance of a Bluesniper long range device, made its debut in July 2004, and was built by members of the Flexlis group in less than 2 days using off-the-shelf components for less than $200 USD.

Reports of the device "blasting" Bluetooth devices or it being a "gun" should be seen more as colourful metaphors rather than how the device actually works, since the device is essentially, a long range Bluetooth device by virtue of a higher gain antenna. Technically speaking, given that Bluetooth operates at the same waveband as 2.4 GHz Wireless LANs (802.11b and 802.11g), there is no reason that the range of Bluetooth should not be extended considerably by an appropriate antenna, as it has been for Wireless LANs.

At CyberThinc, we have extensive experience of developing custom applications operating at 2.4 GHz, so contrary to the naysayers, we know what can be achieved with a decent high gain antenna. Range can be extended a long way, and our field trials with antennae of between 6dBi and 17dBi gain show considerable benefits for both Bluetooth and 802.11b/g tests. Like the Team mentioned above, we are also evaluating the use of the Gumstix, an ultra small embedded computer using an ARM processor, and running the Linux kernel. In our case, we were already using the Gumstix for another bespoke project, so it was trivial to repurpose it for this task.

See Also:

Bluetooth, Bluejacking, Bluesnarfing, Bluetooth Vulnerabilities

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References




www.cyberthinc.com