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Stop the Invisible Trackers: Meet the Bluetooth Radar Project

Quick Summary: πŸ“

MetaRadar is an Android application designed for monitoring and analyzing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) environments. It allows users to scan for BLE devices, track their presence, analyze their GATT services, and receive real-time alerts for suspicious or trackable devices.

Key Takeaways: πŸ’‘

  • βœ… Bluetooth Radar provides deep, real-time analysis of BLE traffic to identify devices that pose tracking risks.

  • βœ… The tool is invaluable for security researchers and IoT developers needing to audit or debug BLE privacy implementations (e.g., randomized MAC addresses).

  • βœ… It features a GATT services explorer for granular data inspection, defining device types via metadata, and calculating approximate distance.

  • βœ… The application operates entirely offline, ensuring user privacy and making it suitable for sensitive security research.

  • βœ… Real-time alerting capabilities help detect unwanted tracking or suspicious devices moving alongside the user.

Project Statistics: πŸ“Š

  • ⭐ Stars: 1221
  • 🍴 Forks: 88
  • ❗ Open Issues: 33

Tech Stack: πŸ’»

  • βœ… Kotlin

Have you ever stopped to think about how many devices around you are constantly broadcasting signals? We're swimming in a sea of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) packets emitted by headphones, smartwatches, IoT sensors, and even hidden trackers. While convenient, this constant chatter creates a massive, often invisible, privacy risk. Every broadcast is a potential breadcrumb leading straight back to you. This is where the "Bluetooth Radar" project steps in, acting as your personal privacy shield and research tool in the BLE wilderness.

The core purpose of this project is empowerment through visibility. BLE devices rely on advertising packets, and some older or poorly designed gadgets use persistent identifiers that make them highly trackable. The Bluetooth Radar app scans your immediate environment, not just listing devices, but deeply analyzing their broadcast behavior. It’s essentially a sophisticated sniffer and analyzer built for everyday use and security research.

How does it work? Think of it like a weather radar, but for radio waves. It captures the raw BLE traffic. The magic happens in the analysis phase. The app differentiates between privacy-conscious devices that use randomized, rotating addresses (good!) and those that expose static, trackable IDs (bad!). Furthermore, it allows for deep dives into the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) services, letting you explore the specific data and characteristics being advertised by a deviceβ€”a feature indispensable for developers and security auditors.

For developers, especially those working on IoT, mobile security, or embedded systems, this tool is invaluable. Need to debug why your new BLE product’s privacy features aren't properly randomizing MAC addresses? Want to understand exactly what information a competitor's device is broadcasting? Bluetooth Radar provides the granular data and filtering capabilities necessary for rapid prototyping and security auditing. You can define highly flexible filters to narrow down the noise, focusing only on specific device types or behaviors relevant to your research.

Beyond auditing, the project offers real-time defense. It’s capable of alerting you if a suspicious device is moving along with you over timeβ€”a critical feature for detecting unwanted stalking or tracking attempts. This moves the project beyond a simple diagnostic tool into a proactive security measure. Crucially, all this powerful analysis is performed entirely offline. There is no data sharing, no geolocation tracking, ensuring that the tool built to protect your privacy doesn't compromise it in the process. This commitment to offline operation makes it a trustworthy asset for sensitive security research and personal investigation. It gives you the control back, allowing you to make informed decisions about the technology you interact with every single day.

Learn More: πŸ”—

View the Project on GitHub


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