Bluetooth Has A New Trick To Protect Your Privacy, With A Battery-Saving Bonus

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

TL;DR

Bluetooth Core 6.1 introduces Randomized RPA (resolvable private address) Updates.
By randomizing the timing of address changes, it will be harder for people to correlate addresses with specific devices.
The way Randomized RPA is being implemented also promises power savings.

Bluetooth was something of a revelation when it debuted back in the late ’90s. While other tech standards like USB and Wi-Fi have been just as game-changing, those also felt a bit like the evolution of existing wired and wireless solutions. But Bluetooth offered something unique, tackling short-range wireless digital communication in a way we really hadn’t seen before. We’ve come a long way from the early days of those extremely tacky phone headsets, and now Bluetooth is the heart of the entire wireless accessory ecosystem. This week we’re learning about some of the latest developments arriving to enhance the standard.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) updates the Bluetooth Core spec on a biannual basis, and is now announcing the changes for the new 6.1 release. While we’re not due to get any major new feature additions, the SIG does share two solidly worthwhile changes aimed at improving power efficiency and boosting security.

As far as security goes, it’s somewhat rare that we see Bluetooth exploited as part as a direct attack vector, and far more often the impact is instead from a privacy perspective. While the Bluetooth radios on our phones and accessories are eager to communicate with other device, that can also be a liability if someone wants to use that wireless data to track our presence over time. With this updated Core 6.1 specification, Bluetooth devices will add new randomness to how they time address changes in a way that should make it more difficult for third parties to identify specific devices.

That change is part of the SIG is implementing Bluetooth Randomized RPA (resolvable private address) Updates functionality, and because of the way this will now work, we can also hope to for some level of increased power efficiency as a bonus. The impact will probably depend a lot on specific hardware, and the fact that we haven’t seen any attempt to quantify that efficiency boost makes us suspect it might on the more meager end of the spectrum, but we’ll take what we can get!

Don’t count on seeing any device manufacturers advertising “Bluetooth Core 6.1” support as they start implementing these changes (the SIG even specifically advises against this, instead directing firms to focus on specific features), but hopefully we’ll all be able to start appreciating their impact in the months to come, as compatible devices arrive.

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