Functional Audit of IoT Toys with Bluetooth LE

Authors

  • Jose Aveleira-Mata Universidad de León
  • Diego Narciandi-Rodríguez Universidad de León
  • Isaías García-Rodríguez Universidad de León
  • Javier Alfonso-Cendón Universidad de León
  • Sergio Rubio-Martín Universidad de León
  • Héctor Alaiz-Moretón Universidad de León

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17979/ja-cea.2025.46.12272

Keywords:

Embedded system security, BLE traffic analysis, Connected toys, Intrusion detection, Home IoT, Device auditing, Secure wireless communications

Abstract

This work presents a functional audit of commercial devices with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity, focused on
connected toys in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). The methodology is based on the use of two nRF52840 dongles:
one configured as a scanner to identify random MAC addresses, and the other as a BLE sniffer integrated with Wireshark to
capture traffic between the device and its mobile application. The captures show that several of the analyzed devices transmit
data without encryption or authentication, enabling attacks such as interception, command injection, or replay. As future work,
we propose using the captured data to train anomaly detection models using machine learning techniques.

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Published

2025-09-01

Issue

Section

Computadores y Control