Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

staceyoniot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 235 posts

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#191

Post by giantg2 »

judge2020 wrote: post #187
giantg2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Home Wireless Networking is still pretty much an unsolved problem for average consumers." What do you mean? Most consumers have a wireless router, and that works for their needs.

If you live in anything other than an apartment, your wifi connection drops considerably once a few walls and a floor are in the way. Mesh networks solve this by repeating the signal halfway to your hard-to-reach devices, although it must be done in an intelligent way if you want seamless band switching and its performance might be greatly improved with wifi 7's sensing capabilities.

My router is in the basement. Reception is great throughout the house, including the second floor, and even decent out in the garage or on the deck. Similar setup and results for my in-laws who have a massive house (3000-3500 sqft).

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#192

Post by pizza »

1MachineElf wrote: post #185
pizza wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another idea in the opposite direction: somebody should build a $20 firewall/tappable ethernet cable with some kind of builtin eBPF support + a universe of community packages. The community would then share privacy-enhancing I/O profiles for every kind of device. If years later e.g. my adversarial lightbulb pivots to brokering kompromat SIGINT, I want to filter that out, and I want not to be the first one to write a…

When I read this comment and the username that wrote it, I can't help but wonder if it's a reference to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Funny, when I first signed up it was a reference to a joke that a pizza with radius z and thickness a, its volume is pizza. It's only since then that I've read Snow Crash (a book I do think about quite often..) maybe I should retcon my etymology lol

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#193

Post by judge2020 »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #94
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #37

There seems to be a lot of FUD about this. Make no mistake, the malicious and privacy invasive applications are already being used; they just don't follow a IEEE spec and aren't associated with WiFi directly. If a maliciously controlled router wants to track you it already can because your phone, smart watch, and laptop already broadcast themselves. This technology may not seem useful to the purpose of WiFi on it's f…

It's not FUD. There's nothing hypothetical about the danger.

The hypothetical in this is that this suddenly opens the door to RF-based physical sensing, when every attacker that can gain from this is already using it, just via custom equipment.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#194

Post by judge2020 »

transpute wrote: post #50

(2021) privacy comments on Wi-Fi 7 standards work for 802.11bf, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14918.pdf > it has been shown that SENS-based classifiers can infer privacy-critical information such as keyboard typing, gesture recognition and activity tracking ... since Wi-Fi signals can penetrate hard objects and can be used without the presence of light, end-users may not even realize they are being tracked ... individua…

My concern is that people opting out of this protocol won't actually be opting out of the sensing technology. Any attacker trying to sense keystrokes using RF waves already can do that and won't be hindered by some opt out program nor be considered whether or not wifi 7 sensing is allowed to be part of new routers.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#195

Post by judge2020 »

giantg2 wrote: post #191
judge2020 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in anything other than an apartment, your wifi connection drops considerably once a few walls and a floor are in the way. Mesh networks solve this by repeating the signal halfway to your hard-to-reach devices, although it must be done in an intelligent way if you want seamless band switching and its performance might be greatly improved with wifi 7's sensing capabilities.

My router is in the basement. Reception is great throughout the house, including the second floor, and even decent out in the garage or on the deck. Similar setup and results for my in-laws who have a massive house (3000-3500 sqft).

Many houses and places of business have walls or floors made with thicker material that block/hinder the waves - things like solid wood floors, brick walls or concrete walls can do a number on even 2.4ghz signals.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#196

Post by pettusftw »

judge2020 wrote: post #193
selfhoster11 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not FUD. There's nothing hypothetical about the danger.

The hypothetical in this is that this suddenly opens the door to RF-based physical sensing, when every attacker that can gain from this is already using it, just via custom equipment.

I interpret it as eliminating the barrier to entry to those that know how to set up custom equipment. I haven't tried, so I don't know how large that barrier is, but it seems safe to say there's a very low probability a random person could accomplish it now vs when it's default hardware and requires no technical expertise.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#197

Post by giantg2 »

judge2020 wrote: post #195
giantg2 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My router is in the basement. Reception is great throughout the house, including the second floor, and even decent out in the garage or on the deck. Similar setup and results for my in-laws who have a massive house (3000-3500 sqft).

Many houses and places of business have walls or floors made with thicker material that block/hinder the waves - things like solid wood floors, brick walls or concrete walls can do a number on even 2.4ghz signals.

The in-laws have hardwood floors on both levels. I haven't seen internal masonry walls in most places.

Even if that is a concern, I don't see sensing as being a benefit.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#198

Post by kingcharles »

ackbar03 wrote: post #71
mulmen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I don’t want anyone taking a WiFi “photo” of me on the throne I should put up aluminum foil curtains?

Wear a tin foil hat. And take a photo of yourself anyways cause a guy on the throne with a tin foil hat on sounds hilarious

I think there is a subreddit for it.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#199

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Ginden wrote: post #155
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if everyone in the world setup TOR gateways and used TOR for everything then the survailiance and ad instry would collapse overnight. Back in the real world it would be frightingly effective.

Buying copper mesh from shop is far more accessible to average user than setting up TOR relay.

You can find out if TOR is work8ng by typing in 'what is my IP' into google.

How do you know if your sepf made faray cage is leaking?

Are you going to get an expensive spectrum analiser? Do you know how to use it?

I can go on the street and find a random person who understands networking withing 10 minutes. I have never met a RF engineer in my life.

Re: The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

#200

Post by jsmcgd »

judge2020 wrote: post #186
transpute wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

802.11bf Wi-Fi 7 Sensing works with all frequencies, 2.4 and up. Even if Neighbor 2 turns off their router, Neighbor 1 could passively use the radio waves from Neighbor 3's router to surveil reflections from Neighbor 2, including keyboard typing, heartrate/breathing, location and physical activity. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493

The problem with this neighbor-spying fear is that "complex math using data from radio waves to sense stuff" is already possible and readily available by anyone willing to study and put in the world of building it, wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics.

> wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics

It makes it suddenly ubiquitous when all new WiFi devices use the new standard.

Post reply on HN