Implementing whitelisting on a consumer product

[Chukwuemeka]

Hi,

I am working on developing a consumer product. I need to provide some security to product in the sense that not everyone can connect to the BLE of the product. For example, having a BLE lamp, you won’t want your neighbor to connect to the lamp and dim it.

I think whitelisting could be a possible way and I have searched on different topics on whitelisting but I couldn’t find something related to my use case.

Is it possible to have whitelisting of a device (e.g android phone) based on the RSSI? Or is there any other way I can implement the desired security on the consumer product?

I appreciate any guide on this.

[Kenneth]

Hi,

Typically the BLE peripheral HID examples (mouse and keyboard) show how to enable and use whitelisting.

Best regards,
Kenneth

[Chukwuemeka]

To my knowledge, the HID examples are hard coded with the desired addresses for whitelisting. My question was how can I add an address for whitelisting by measuring the RSSI. In that way, the customers can add their addresses to the whitelist when they buy the product.

[Kenneth]

Hi,

There is one other option, when the peripheral start advertising it can setup a whitelist for scan request or connection requests.

If it setup whitelist for connection requests, but no whitelist for scan requests, then the peripheral can receive a BLE_GAP_EVT_SCAN_REQ_REPORT for every time a central send a scan request:

http://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/com.nordic.infocenter.s132.api.v6.1.0/structble__gap__evt__scan__req__report__t.html?cp=2_3_1_1_0_2_1_4_47 

The BLE_GAP_EVT_SCAN_REQ_REPORT contain the RSSI value and peer address. The peripheral can then based on the RSSI value decide to add the peer address to the whitelist to allow connection request.

Best regards,
Kenneth