Kamala's risk from bluetooth

The hot takes are a bit tedious.

Dec 08, 2021

Politico, a Washington DC magazine, has an article claiming US VP Kamala Harris is paranoid of cybersecurity threats from bluetooth, and hence wears wired headphones. This has caused an explosion of hot-takes where cybersecurity experts opine that there’s a national security threat if the VP streams music from her iPod to her bluetooth headphones.

I thought I’d write up something simpler.

The issue may not be bluetooth security at all. Her security detail has a complicated set of radio defense devices that may interfere. Bluetooth headsets have long been plagued by occasional skips when listening to music due to radio interference. It may simply be that when surrounded by a VP security detail, that bluetooth doesn’t work well, suffering occasional interference. I was in an Uber last week where the driver streamed music from the iPhone via bluetooth to the car speakers, with occasional skips, and it was extremely irritating.

Bluetooth to what? If she’s just streaming music or audiobooks from an iPod during her exercise, then what security threat is there? It’s not like there’s national security secrets on her iPod. It’s not as if you can interfere with her music stream in order to trigger the nuclear football.

Instead of music, she may be using the headset to talk on the phone, where she may be discussing secrets. But if that’s the case, then there is a ton of more important security issues than bluetooth. A bluetooth headset talking via your cell phone is probably the most secure part — the baseband firmware and 4G/5G cell technology is more prone to failures than bluetooth. The NSA provides secure phones to presidents and veeps: maybe the NSA simply disabled bluetooth on those phones (plus a lot of other well-known features of cell phone technology).

Bluetooth vulnerabilities exist — but only in general. They are still lacking specifically with AirPods — there are currently no known vulnerabilities in AirPods talking to an iPhone/iPod that would allow a hacker to break into the devices or eavesdrop on communications. There were in the past, but when discovered, Apple quickly fixes them. Thus, your AirPods are currently secure as far as anybody knows.

But then there are possible “0days”. The Vice President of the United States is an important espionage target. Nation states can spend millions of dollars looking for previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in AirPods. This isn’t unique to bluetooth, but any radio technology. Saying “bluetooth has known flaws” is the wrong statement — saying that “any radio technology is open to attack” from nation state actors is the correct statement.

This means the decision would be out of Kamala’s hands. The NSA is going to tell her to avoid radios if she can.

There are other threats than eavesdropping or compromise. Bluetooth has recognizable signatures. You can simply program a drone to home in on a bluetooth identifier, or even just the bluetooth raw signal, and explode once it reaches the target.

And if eavesdropping is the threat, why not directional microphones? If you can take a picture of Kamala wearing headphones, you are in a position to aim a directional microphone at her and hear at least her side of the conversation.

The point of this post is that I find the hot-takes a bit tedious when we haven’t answered the basic questions. Is this for listening to music or audio books from an iPod? Is it the super-secure phone the NSA providers her? or a backup phone she uses for personal things, such as talking to her husband? Is she excessively paranoid, as Politico suggested, or reasonable? It depends on these questions. She may not have a choice with an NSA phone, but it’s certainly excessive paranoia if only listening to iPod music. As a cybersecurity expert, I really don’t have an opinion on her choice — I do have questions, though.

Anywhere, here’s a list of various hot-takes.

Cybersect

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