What is it with bluetooth drivers?

Hi all,

What is this thing about Bluetooth dongles been tied to manufacturers
drivers?

Why are Broadcom asking people hosting websites with the Bluetooth patcher
to remove it?

I'm just interested to know what this is all about, I would have thought a
manufacturer of a Bluetooth device would be interested in having the latest
drivers available for that device (widcomm drivers for example).

It all seem a mess at the moment, the Microsoft stack does not support all
the profiles and the manufacturers don't seem to want you to have anything
other then that supplied on their CD?

Regards,

Paul

Paul Westwell wrote:

> I'm just interested to know what this is all about, I would have thought a
> manufacturer of a Bluetooth device would be interested in having the latest
> drivers available for that device (widcomm drivers for example).

You mean they should support their hardware? Why? If you don't like
their drivers, buy a new dongle with new drivers. They have a security
hole in their drivers for more than a year? No problem, buy a new
dongle. :-(

<http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/371443>
<http://www.pentest.co.uk/documents/ptl-2004-03.html>

I own two Tecom dongles, and asked Tecom for updated drivers (you have to
beg them for drivers, not just download the drivers from their
site). In their answer, they offered to send a "license key" for one of
the vulnerable drivers. After I pointed out that exactly that version
was mentioned in the advisory, they didn't bother to answer again.

Regards...
Michael