Title: Learning to Hack Bluetooth Low Energy with BLE CTF

Instructor: Ryan Holeman

Abstract: BLE CTF is a series of Bluetooth low energy challenges in a capture the flag format. It was created to teach the fundamentals of interacting with and hacking Bluetooth Low Energy services. Each exercise, or flag, aims to interactively teach a new concept to the user. For this workshop, we will step through a series of exercises to teach beginner students new concepts and allow more seasoned users to try new tools and techniques. After completing this workshop, you should have a good solid understanding of how to interact with and hack on BLE devices in the wild.

If you have done BLE CTF in the past, this class is still valuable. This class will be based off of a complete rewrite of BLE CTF which is being released as version 2.0. It will still have many of the challenges from 1.0, but restructured, where every flag is hosted in a completely separate GATT service. Along with the v1.0 flags, new new version allows for more advanced challenges which were not possible in the past.

To prepare for the workshop, please follow the the setup documentation located at https://github.com/hackgnar/ble_ctf/blob/master/docs/workshop_setup.md

Level: All skill levels welcome

Pre-Requisites: None

Required Materials: Preferably a Linux box with a bluetooth controller or a bluetooth usb dongle. An OSX or Windows machine with a Linux VM and usb passthough works as well but should be setup and tested before the workshop.

The workshop exercises run on a relatively cheap piece of hardware (ESP32). If attendees want to bring their own to get flashed, we can assist. If they want to buy one, I sell them pre-flashed for $20.