NEW YORK — What happened
Consumer security brands have begun shipping smart door locks, automotive entry pods, and tracking tags equipped with Bluetooth 6.0 standard hardware. The core addition to this specification is Channel Sounding, a physical-layer protocol designed to accurately calculate distance between two devices down to the centimeter level.
Why it matters
Legacy keyless entry systems reliant on basic Bluetooth signal strength (RSSI) were vulnerable to 'relay attacks.' Criminals could use signal amplifiers to trick a lock or vehicle into thinking a user's phone was nearby when it was actually yards away inside a home. Channel Sounding uses phase-based ranging and precise time-of-flight measurements that cannot be spoofed by simple signal repeaters.
Deep dive
Traditional RSSI measures how strong a signal is when it arrives; if an attacker amplifies the signal, the receiver assumes the sender is close. Channel Sounding instead measures the phase shifts of radio waves across multiple frequencies simultaneously. Because the speed of light is constant, any artificial delay introduced by an attacker's relay hardware disrupts the phase alignment calculations, causing the receiving lock to instantly reject the signal.
Report check
Security test labs evaluated three newly released Bluetooth 6.0 lock modules against commercial relay attack toolkits. In every test run, the locks successfully detected the artificial latency introduced by relay hardware and refused to disengage the deadbolt. However, reports that Bluetooth 6.0 completely eliminates all proximity vulnerabilities are premature, as implementation errors at the application layer could still leave software backdoors open.
Open questions
How rapidly will smartphone makers roll out full hardware support for Bluetooth 6.0 across budget device tiers? Will existing smart home ecosystems require full hub replacements to support the new secure pairing standards?