Exfiltration Over Other Network Medium: Exfiltration Over Bluetooth

Adversaries may attempt to exfiltrate data over Bluetooth rather than the command and control channel. If the command and control network is a wired Internet connection, an adversary may opt to exfiltrate data using a Bluetooth communication channel.

Adversaries may choose to do this if they have sufficient access and proximity. Bluetooth connections might not be secured or defended as well as the primary Internet-connected channel because it is not routed through the same enterprise network.

ID: T1011.001
Sub-technique of:  T1011
Tactic: Exfiltration
Platforms: Linux, Windows, macOS
Version: 1.2
Created: 09 March 2020
Last Modified: 24 October 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
S0143 Flame

Flame has a module named BeetleJuice that contains Bluetooth functionality that may be used in different ways, including transmitting encoded information from the infected system over the Bluetooth protocol, acting as a Bluetooth beacon, and identifying other Bluetooth devices in the vicinity.[1]

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1042 Disable or Remove Feature or Program

Disable Bluetooth in local computer security settings or by group policy if it is not needed within an environment.

M1028 Operating System Configuration

Prevent the creation of new network adapters where possible.

Detection Strategy

ID Name Analytic ID Analytic Description
DET0554 Detection of Bluetooth-Based Data Exfiltration AN1531

Detection of non-interactive or suspicious processes accessing Bluetooth interfaces and transmitting outbound traffic following file access or staging activity.

AN1532

Use of hcitool, bluetoothctl, or rfcomm to initialize Bluetooth connection paired with recent file reads by the same user or session.

AN1533

Observation of blueutil/networksetup commands or low-level APIs toggling Bluetooth or initiating transfers, especially if paired with recent large file read activity by non-GUI processes.

References