Securing the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Physical Layer with Round Trip Time of Flight Measurements

In recent years, there have been several exploits of wireless protocols based on the relay and replay attack vectors. For example, car access systems today are based on low-frequency radio technology and are vulnerable to these attacks. With the increasing trend of automobiles being stolen using these attack vectors, there has been increased urgency in the market to provide a secure and robust wireless solution for solving this problem. Round trip time of flight (RTT) is a ranging security method based on the Bluetooth Low Energy 2 megabits PHY that helps developers to secure against a variety of attack vectors such as replay and relay attacks. Using RTT, it is possible to verify that a peer is both trusted and physically located nearby. In this discussion, we will investigate these attack vectors and discuss how RTT can be used to help enable secure range bounding solutions.