Draft:BTCrack
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Comment: Note to any reviewers, this editor has been adding a fair few bits of their own OR to articles, and this is another one of those COI OR articles. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 20:59, 8 July 2026 (UTC)
| BTCrack | |
|---|---|
 BTCrack 1.1 recovering a Bluetooth link key | |
| Original author | Thierry Zoller |
| Release | December 2006 |
| Stable release | 1.1
|
| Type | Bluetooth security tool, password cracking |
| License | Freeware (binary), source released 2007 |
BTCrack is a Bluetooth passkey (PIN) and link-key brute-force tool developed by Thierry Zoller. Released at the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress (23C3) in Berlin in December 2006, it was the first publicly available implementation of the pairing attack described by Yaniv Shaked and Avishai Wool.[1][2]
Design
[edit]BTCrack recovers the passkey and link key from a captured Bluetooth pairing exchange. Capturing that exchange requires either a professional Bluetooth analyser (such as the Frontline FTE BPA-100 / BPA-105 or LeCroy Merlin) or a consumer CSR-based USB dongle re-flashed with modified firmware. From 2011 onwards, the open-source Ubertooth platform provided a lower-cost capture option.[3]
From version 1.1, BTCrack added FPGA acceleration via Pico Computing E-series boards. Published benchmarks reported a Pentium 4 dual-core at 2 GHz achieving approximately 200,000 keys per second, an E12 FPGA at 50 MHz achieving 7.6 million keys per second, an E12 at 75 MHz achieving 10 million keys per second, and an E14 board achieving 30 million keys per second.[4]
Legal challenge under § 202c StGB
[edit]When Germany's Strafgesetzbuch § 202c ("Hackerparagraph") took effect on 10 August 2007, criminalising the production or distribution of tools designed for computer crime, Zoller initially withdrew BTCrack from public availability. On 26 September 2007, Zoller announced on the Full Disclosure mailing list that his employer n.runs would republish BTCrack together with its source code as a deliberate test of the law's scope, while simultaneously expanding the company's vulnerability disclosure policy.[5][6][7] According to Dark Reading, they were the first researchers in Germany to publicly restore a previously withdrawn security tool under the new law.
Reception
[edit]BTCrack has been documented as a reference implementation of the Shaked-Wool pairing attack across several security textbooks. Hacking Exposed Wireless (3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, 2015) devotes three pages to the tool and its FPGA variant.[8] It is also described in the Encyclopedia of Information Assurance,[9] the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Version 9 Cert Guide,[10] and Managing Security Services in Heterogenous Networks (CRC Press, 2020).[11] The tool was included by default in the BackTrack Linux distribution from 2008 onwards.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "New Hacking Tools Bite Bluetooth". Dark Reading. December 2006.
- ^ "23C3: Neue Hacker-Tools für Bluetooth". Heise Online (in German). December 2006.
- ^ Zoller, Thierry; Finistere, Kevin (December 2006). Bluetooth Hacking Revisited. 23rd Chaos Communication Congress (23C3). Berlin.
- ^ Roberts, Paul F. (April 2007). "Researcher creates Bluetooth crack tool". Network World.
- ^ Zoller, Thierry (2007-09-26). "BTCrack back online, source released - §202c challenge". Full Disclosure mailing list.
- ^ "German Researchers to Test New Anti-Hacker Law". Dark Reading. September 2007.
- ^ "German security shop challenges anti-hacker laws". ZDNet. 2007.
- ^ Wright, Joshua; Cache, Johnny (2015). Hacking Exposed Wireless: Wireless Security Secrets & Solutions (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. pp. 290–292. ISBN 9780071827638.
- ^ Herold, Rebecca; Rogers, Marcus K., eds. (2011). Encyclopedia of Information Assurance. Auerbach Publications. pp. 10, 259. ISBN 9781420066203.
- ^ Gregg, Michael (2017). Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Version 9 Cert Guide (2nd ed.). Pearson IT Certification. ISBN 9780789756916.
- ^ Thandeeswaran, R.; Perumal, Thinagaran; Ma, Kun; Jeyanthi, N., eds. (2020). Managing Security Services in Heterogenous Networks. CRC Press. p. 161. ISBN 9780367457341.
External links
[edit]Category:Bluetooth Category:Cryptographic attacks Category:Free security software Category:Password cracking software Category:2006 software