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Hacking Cell Phones via Bluetooth Tools under Linux

Issue 161

From Issue #161
September 2007

Sep 01, 2007  By Patrick M. Davila
 in
Ditch the funky USB cable and connect to your cell phone and other devices with Bluetooth.
Conclusion

The tools available for Bluetooth devices under Linux are fairly robust. They provide all of the functionality of similarly closed applications available for Windows and Mac at no cost. Once again, the Linux community should be commended for developing such great programs. The command-line tools provide a good insight into the protocols and services used in accessing Bluetooth devices. The GUI applications are intuitive enough that average Linux users can put them to good use in short order. Linux is right in the mix in the growing field of communication devices and the applications that manage them.

Resources

BlueZ Bluetooth Protocol Stack for Linux: www.bluez.org

KDE Bluetooth Framework: bluetooth.kmobiletools.org

GNOME Bluetooth Subsystem How-To: usefulinc.com/software/gnome-bluetooth

Gentoo Bluetooth Wiki: gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_mobile_phone,_Bluetooth_and_GNOME

General Linux and Bluetooth Links: www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth

KMobileTools Application: www.kmobiletools.org

GNOME Phone Manager: live.gnome.org/PhoneManager

Audacity Audio Editor: audacity.sourceforge.net

Patrick M. Davila is a programmer and has been a Linux enthusiast since 1998. He is a co-host of The Linux Link Tech Show, the longest continually running Linux show on the Internet. When not tinkering with Linux, Patrick enjoys music, beer, soccer and spending time with his family.

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Phone to Computer speakers

James C's picture
Submitted by James C (not verified) on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 01:36.

Pat,
My cell phone is able to stream audio to bluetooth devices. I was wondering if you knwe a way that I could connect the phone to the computer and then stream the music from my computer to the speakers using BlueZ

Thanks,
James

help

jen waterloo on canada's picture
Submitted by jen waterloo on canada (not verified) on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 08:08.

Need to get family videos tele # pics text off samsung u740 asap phone is defective please contact me asap 5195783507 i dont know linUx and the cell will not use aknowledge the card in it and usb does not work thanks jen this was sent via the cell phone

regardsing n800

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 02/01/2009 - 08:06.

hi ,
is this the same way you can connect the n800( as a computer) with the n95 ( as a mobile phone )
can u give me the simple guideline for doing same to connect them .

thanx ,
dave
uk

Nokia PC Suite Alternative

Conrad's picture
Submitted by Conrad (not verified) on Sat, 04/12/2008 - 05:53.

Hi,

I was wondering if you know of a application that does everything that the Nokia PC Suite for Windows does? I've been trying to find something that will work properly when it comes to syncing, but no joy yet. Please let me know.

Thanks.

just something i wanted to

anomit's picture
Submitted by anomit (not verified) on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 12:35.

just something i wanted to ask you.....i use a ppp script to dial the connection. I couldn't figure how to configure wvdial for this thing. Does it have any performance gain/loss when compared to the wvdial method?

PIN

caleb@tcad.net's picture
Submitted by caleb@tcad.net on Fri, 09/28/2007 - 16:30.

I am using Mandriva 2007 and had a terrible time getting the PIN number to work. I would enter the correct pin of the computer into the phone and it would reject it. Finally had to issue the command

#passkey-agent --default /usr/bin/bluez-pin

and then it successfully allowed me to pair the phone with the computer.

passkey-agent

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/26/2007 - 14:45.

Same for me! I spent almost two hours debugging this... maybe it should be noted somewhere above!

lower level access?

randy's picture
Submitted by randy on Wed, 08/08/2007 - 07:32.

Hi Patrick, great and timely article, as I've recently tried using Bluetooth to talk to my son's phone (unsuccessfully). Looking forward to trying your approach. I was hoping to access the phone at lower than just the file level though, as he deleted a bunch of pictures, and I wanted to try to recover them. So I was hoping to get access to the phone as a filesystem or disk device so I could dump the whole thing to a file for further processing. Ideally I'd just be able to do something like "dd if=/dev/phone of=/home/phonedisk" and be able to use my tools on the "phonedisk" file I created. Is something like that possible? I'll try it myself from home tonight, just thought I'd ask in advance. Thanks!

lower level access?

hackmeister's picture
Submitted by hackmeister on Mon, 08/13/2007 - 10:00.

Randy,
Have you checked out these?:
http://www.siltala.net/2006/06/07/mounting-the-nokia-9300-file-system-on...

http://mobdev.tknerr.de/2007/07/12/mounting-nokia-phones-to-linux-pc-via...

http://davesource.com/Solutions/20070520.T-Mobile-Nokia-E65-Ubuntu-Linux...

Hope they help.

Pat

re: lower level access

randy's picture
Submitted by randy on Fri, 08/24/2007 - 06:33.

Thanks Pat. Looks like some useful info on those sites. I'll try putting everything together some night when I have the phone and computer together.

Thanks,
randy

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