BlueHydra is a Bluetooth device discovery service built on top of the bluez library. BlueHydra makes use of ubertooth where available and attempts to track both classic and low energy (LE) bluetooth devices over time.

On a Pwnie Express sensor this will be installed as a system service with the regular updates.

On non Pwnie Express systems the files in this repository can be run directly.

Ensure that the following packages are installed:

bluez
bluez-test-scripts
python-bluez
python-dbus
ubertooth # where applicable
sqlite3
libsqlite3-dev

If your chosen distro is still on bluez 4 please choose a more up to date distro. Bluez 5 was released in 2012 and is required.

On Debian-based systems, these packages can be installed with the following command line:

sudo apt-get install bluez bluez-test-scripts python-bluez python-dbus libsqlite3-dev ubertooth

To install the needed gems it may be helpful (but not required) to use bundler:

sudo apt-get install ruby-dev bundler
(from inside the blue_hydra directory)
bundle install

In addition to the Bluetooth packages listed above you will need to have Ruby version 2.1 or higher installed, as well as Ruby development headers for gem compilation (on Debian based systems, this is the ruby-dev package). With ruby installed add the bundler gem and then run bundle install inside the checkout directory.

Once all dependencies are met simply run ./bin/blue_hydra to start discovery. If you experience gem inconsistency try running bundle exec ./bin/blue_hydra instead.

There are a few flags that can be passed to this script:

• -d or --daemonize: suppress CLI output and run in background
• -z or --demo: run with CLI output but mask displayed macs for demo purposes
• -p or --pulse: attempt to send data to Pwn Pulse

BlueHydra should function with most internal bluetooth cards but we recommend using the Sena UD100 adapter.

Additionally you can make use of Ubertooth One hardware to detect active devices not in discoverable mode.

Note: using an Ubertooth One is not a replacement for a conventional bluetooth dongle.

The config file is located in /opt/pwnix/data/blue_hydra/blue_hydra.yml on Pwnie devices. On systems which do no have the /opt/pwnix/data directory the service will default to looking in the root of the services directory (where this README file is located. It will still be called blue_hydra.yml

The following options can be set:

• log_level: defaults to info level, can be set to debug for much more verbosity. If set to false no log or rssi log will be created.
• bt_device: specify device to use as main bluetooth interface, defaults to hci0
• info_scan_rate: rate at which to run info scan in seconds, defaults to 60
• status_sync_rate: rate at which to sync device status to Pulse in seconds
• btmon_log: true|false, if set to true will log filtered btmon output
• btmon_rawlog: true|false, if set to true will log unfiltered btmon output
• file: if set to a filepath that file will be read in rather than doing live device interactions
• rssi_log: true|false, if set will log serialized RSSI values
• aggressive_rssi: true|false, if set will agressively send RSSIs to Pulse
• ui_filter_mode: :disabled|:hilight|:exclusive, set ui filtering to this mode by default
• ui_inc_filter_mac: - FF:FF:00:00:59:25, set inclusive filter on this mac, each goes on a newline proceeded by hiphon and space
• ui_inc_filter_prox: - 669a0c20-0008-9191-e411-1b11d05d7707-9001-3364, set inclusive filter on this proximity_uuid-major_number-minor_number, each goes on a newline proceeded by hiphon and space

It may also be useful to check blue_hydra --help for additional command line options. At this time it looks like this:

Usage: BlueHydra [options]
    -d, --daemonize                  Suppress output and run in daemon mode
    -z, --demo                       Hide mac addresses in CLI UI
    -p, --pulse                      Send results to hermes
        --pulse-debug                Store results in a file for review
        --no-db                      Keep db in ram only
    -h, --help                       Show this message

All data is logged to an sqlite database (unless --no-db) is passed at the command line. The database is located in the blue_hydra directory, unless /opt/pwnix/data exists (Pwnie Express sensors) and then it is placed in /opt/pwnix/data/blue_hydra.

An example for a script wrapping blue_hydra and creating a csv output after run is available here: https://github.com/pwnieexpress/pwn_pad_sources/blob/develop/scripts/blue_hydra.sh This script will simply take a timestamp before blue_hydra starts, and then again after it exits, then grab a few interesting values from the db and output in csv format.

PR's should be targeted against the "develop" branch. Develop branch gets merged to master branch and tagged during the release process.

If you encounter an error like Parser Thread "\xC3" on US-ASCII it may be due to an encoding misconfiguration on your system.

On Debian like systems, this can be resolved by setting locale encodings as follows:

sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 
sudo locale-gen en en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
export LC_ALL = "en_US"

This issue and solution brought up by llazzaro here.