Bluetooth Low Energy Devices Security Testing Framework

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a low-power wireless protocol, is widely used in industrial automation for monitoring field devices. Although the BLE standard defines advanced security mechanisms, there are known security attacks for BLE and BLE-enabled field devices must be tested thoroughly against these attacks. This article identifies the possible attacks for BLE-enabled field devices relevant for industrial automation. It also presents a framework for defining and executing BLE security attacks and evaluates it on three BLE devices. All tested devices are vulnerable and this confirms that there is a need for better security testing tools as well as for additional defense mechanisms for BLE devices.