Counter measurements of FTE against copying their Bluetooth sniffer

Seems that FTE is finally reacting on the fact that you can easily copy their Comprobes firmware to other, regular Bluetooth USB dongles. First, with their new hardware they released earlier this year, also the structure of the firmware has changed. Therefore the newer firmware wont work out of the box the good old way.

Second they seem to have changed their licensing policy. You have to register your software (with your license key) of FTE4BTonline. And, that’s the funny thing, seems that you also have to ‘de-register’ your software online. Means: when you want to install your software somewhere else, de-install it on the other PC and ‘de-register’ it online. Then install it on the other PC. What happens when your old PC is br0ken? No idea.

Anyway.. maybe that way more people will be interested in building their own and free Bluetooth sniffer.

World’s smallest Bluetooth Dongle?

Hi, there!

Look what I found on a business trip in the US, I am not sure if it’s the world’s smallest Bluetooth Dongle – but a least the smallest I know.

cirago Bluetooth dongle

Unfortunately it’s not the world’s smallest Bluetooth sniffer, because it’s a ROM and you can’t update it 🙁


$ hciconfig hci0 revision
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 00:de:ad:be:ef:D0 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
Unified 21e
Chip version: BlueCore4-ROM
Max key size: 128 bit
SCO mapping: HCI