Bluetooth 6.1 Announced With Randomised RPA Updates, Will Improve Privacy, Battery Efficiency

Hyderabad: The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced Bluetooth 6.1, a new and improved version of its popular wireless communication protocol. While the new standard doesn't affect the connectivity range, it enhances device privacy via randomised Resolvable Private Addresses (RPA) and improves energy efficiency.

An RPA is like the Bluetooth address of a device, created to look random and is used in place of a device's fixed MAC address to protect user privacy. This address allows trusted devices to securely reconnect without revealing their true identity. Another change in how a device handles RPA updates with Bluetooth 6.1 ends up saving battery life.

Enhanced Device Privacy with randomised RPA updates

In the current version of Bluetooth, RPA changes happen at fixed intervals, which is usually every 15 minutes. This introduces a level of predictability, which can be exploited by bad actors in correlation attacks, making long-term tracking possible.

Bluetooth 6.1 solves this problem by changing RPA at a random time between 8 minutes and 15 minutes. The random values are chosen using a NIST-approved secure random number generator, making tracking much harder. Developers can also set custom ranges from as little as 1 second to as long as 1 hour.

SIG states that randomised address updates make it much more difficult for third parties to track or correlate device activity over time.

Bluetooth 6.1 Power Efficiency

Another highlight of Bluetooth 6.1 is better power efficiency, which has been made possible by allowing the Bluetooth chip (Controller) to autonomously handle the randomised RPA updates. Currently, the host device's CPU handles address update, which results in the device waking up every time an address changes. However, the new system will solve this, saving CPU cycles and memory operations—helping save power, especially for small gadgets like earbuds and fitness trackers.

Notably, while Bluetooth 6.1 is official, it might take years before the protocol makes its way to the public as the support in hardware and firmware for Bluetooth technology is not like OTA updates for operating systems. The first wave of chips with Bluetooth 6.1 is unlikely to arrive this year. Even after the chips are available, the implementation could proceed after testing and validation.