Bluetooth Low Energy Security

Bluetooth Low Energy provides five features for its security including pairing, bonding, encryption, authentication and message integrity. These satisfy three pillars of security which are Authentication, Confidentiality, and Authorization. Attacks against improperly secured Bluetooth implementation can provide hackers with unauthorized access to the sensitive information and unauthorized use of the Bluetooth device. The main security features in Bluetooth Low Energy are:

• Pairing is the process of generating shared keys (on both ends) known as Short Term Key (STK)
• Bonding is the subsequent process of pairing where they store the STK in order to form a trusted pair
• Device authentication is when two devices identify if they have same keys
• Encryption is for message confidentiality
• Message integrity is to avoid attackers to forge the data