BloomFuzz: Unveiling Bluetooth L2CAP Vulnerabilities via State Cluster Fuzzing with Target-Oriented State Machines

  • Pyeongju Ahn
  • , Yeonseok Jang
  • , Seunghoon Woo*
  • , Heejo Lee*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Bluetooth technologies are widely utilized across various devices. Despite the advantages, the lack of security in Bluetooth can pose critical threats. Existing approaches that rely solely on Bluetooth specification have failed to bridge the gap between documentation and implemented devices. Therefore, they struggle to (1) precisely generate state machines for target devices and (2) accurately track states during the fuzzing process, resulting in low fuzzing efficiency. In this paper, we propose BloomFuzz, a stateful fuzzer to discover vulnerabilities in Bluetooth Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP) layer. Utilizing the concept of the state cluster, which is a set of one or more states with similar attributes, BloomFuzz  can generate a target-oriented state machine by pruning unimplemented states (missing states) and addressing states that are implemented but not introduced in the specification (hidden states). Furthermore, BloomFuzz  enhances fuzzing efficiency by generating valid test packets for each cluster via cluster-based state machine tracking. When we applied BloomFuzz  to real-world Bluetooth devices, we observed that BloomFuzz  outperformed existing L2CAP fuzzers by (1) discovering 56 potential vulnerabilities (more than twice compared to existing fuzzers), (2) precisely generating a target-oriented state machine, (3) significantly reducing the probability of test packets being rejected (from 76% to 23%), and (4) producing nine times more valid malformed test packets. Our proposed approach can contribute to preventing threats within L2CAP, thereby rendering a secure Bluetooth environment.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputer Security – ESORICS 2024 - 29th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Proceedings
EditorsJoaquin Garcia-Alfaro, Rafał Kozik, Michał Choraś, Sokratis Katsikas
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages110-129
Number of pages20
ISBN (Print)9783031708954
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Event29th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2024 - Bydgoszcz, Poland
Duration: 2024 Sept 162024 Sept 20

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14984 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference29th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2024
Country/TerritoryPoland
CityBydgoszcz
Period24/9/1624/9/20

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Keywords

  • Bluetooth Security
  • L2CAP Security
  • Stateful Fuzzing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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