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Your WiFi Can See You

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61–70 of 93 posts

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#61

Post by devjab »

mk_stjames wrote: post #5

If someone is worried that their government could be flashing the firmware of their WiFi router to use the beamforming antennae of the router to track them walking around their home.... Then they should be way more worried that their government is using any access to their wifi router at all. Like, you got way bigger things to worry about at that point, right? There are a million surveillance side-channels that could…

I’m curious as to which government you think isn’t going to use surveillance tools on you, even if they aren’t exactly legal. I mean, after Echelon we still had the tinfoil disbelief to fall back on, but in a post-Snowden world it’s hard to imagine why you would think your government wouldn’t do this.

You’re not exactly wrong in that you should also be worrying about: Boundless Information, Bullrun, Carnivore, DSCNet, Fairview, ICREACH, Magic Lantern, Main Core, Mainway, Media Monitoring Services, Muscular, Mystic, Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, NSA Ant Catalog, PRISM, Room641A, Sentry Eagle, Special Collection Service, Stellar Wind, Tailored Access Operarions, Turbulence, and, X-Keyscore if you’re American. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also worry about this, just as much.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#62

Post by jaza »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #41

Looking at the source articles, this seems to require specialized equipment and large antennas that are fairly close to whatever is being imaged. So unless there's been some sort of breakthrough, this is not a case of "someone could hack your router and see you in your home".

The article is saying "not yet, but soon, sooner than you think".

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#63

Post by scrps »

cperciva wrote: post #53
scrps wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one upside to this being based on open standards also means that there is no reason this tech can't be used against say, police, politicians, executives. Though I'd like to actually look at how it is practically done first, for all I know this could require more than just access to an AP. This is not my area of expertise so maybe someone that is an expert can confirm my intuition that beamforming even on enterpri…

It's probably not the plaster blocking the signal, but rather a wire mesh which was put up to support the plaster.

Here is where it gets interesting... No mesh, it is lath and plaster. I've had to cut into it in a few rooms and if there is a mesh I have yet to see it. I am wondering what was used in the plaster at this point.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#64

Post by est »

transpute wrote: post #59
est wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also > It should be noted that many WiFi routers, such as TP-Link AC1750, come with 3 antennas, so our method only requires 2 of these routers. > WiFi-based perception is based on the Channel-state-information (CSI) that represents the ratio between the transmitted signal wave and the received signal wave. The CSIs are complex decimal sequences that do not have spatial correspondence to spatial locations AFAIK, acces…

> FPGA/SDR boards Custom firmware is available for existing WiFi radios, e.g. sub-$20 ESP32 WROOM. Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480760

Thus "Your wifi" can not see you unless you setup ESP32 as router and allows remote ROM updates.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#66

Post by avidiax »

XorNot wrote: post #23
matheusmoreira wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still enables parallel construction. They can illegally search and surveil you without your knowledge and there's not much anyone can do about it. They can't submit any findings as evidence but they can totally anonymously tip off other authorities or something. It must be physically impossible to violate our privacy or it doesn't work.

Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found - i.e. "a random search of the public woods near your area found a shallow grave, and tire-tracks matching your car" - but the search was conducted because what actually happened was you were telling a guy "yes I definitely killed Tony and buried him in the woods". People keep using the term as…

Parallel construction is foremost a run-around of the "fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine".[1]

It allows law enforcement to use methods that might amount to illegal searches, and then avoid judicial scrutiny of those methods.

See, for examples of such methods, Stringrays, "persistent surveillance"[2] aircraft, and NSA information sharing agreements.[3]

"Plain sight" doctrine isn't going to apply to these methods. You aren't allowed to use deconvolution to look through frosted glass and call it "plain sight", just as you can't use methods not in typical use to abuse WiFi as an imaging service. You can probably use WiFi traffic metadata, however, just as you can retrospectively use cell tower data.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/a-tivo-for-crime...

[3] https://www.engadget.com/2017-01-12-obama-expands-the-nsas-a...

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#67

Post by transpute »

est wrote: post #64
transpute wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FPGA/SDR boards Custom firmware is available for existing WiFi radios, e.g. sub-$20 ESP32 WROOM. Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480760

Thus "Your wifi" can not see you unless you setup ESP32 as router and allows remote ROM updates.

A nearby adversary can "see" into your home/building without any access to your router's software or hardware.

A nearby adversary needs only the reflections of Wi-Fi from your or neighboring routers.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#68

Post by t0bia_s »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #26
XorNot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found - i.e. "a random search of the public woods near your area found a shallow grave, and tire-tracks matching your car" - but the search was conducted because what actually happened was you were telling a guy "yes I definitely killed Tony and buried him in the woods". People keep using the term as…

Even if you committed a crime, police should not be able to find out about it through illegal means. Police should not be allowed to run SIGINT operations on citizens. They should not even have that capability. Why is it normal for police to have these literal spy movie technologies?

Because people generally wants rulers above them. It is a state doctrine that tells you it is for your protection.

But if someone stole your bike, usually police wont find it.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#69

Post by Communitivity »

I wonder if this will cause an interest in in Faraday Cage walls: outer wall sheetrock with a copper wire mesh support, with a ground to prevent re-radiating. You'd also need to have the same mesh on the house roof and attic walls. Copper would be best for conductivity. The mesh holes would need to no greater than 5mm to block 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. This is rounded down to the nearest mm from the equation:

   hole size (m) = speed (m/s) x frequency (Hz) 
   (.0599 = 299,792,458 * 5,000,000,000)
The better the conductivity of the metal the thinner the thickness can be. It's differences between 10s of microns though, so in practical terms thin copper fire should work. Even thin steel wire should work.

Your biggest leakage problem would be doors and windows. Window screens sized to stop mosquitos (1.2mm hole size) will help with this, for the windows. Metal screen doors should help.

This won't prevent all leakage, but should prevent most of it.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#70

Post by cperciva »

scrps wrote: post #63
cperciva wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably not the plaster blocking the signal, but rather a wire mesh which was put up to support the plaster.

Here is where it gets interesting... No mesh, it is lath and plaster. I've had to cut into it in a few rooms and if there is a mesh I have yet to see it. I am wondering what was used in the plaster at this point.

Huh. I know lime plaster can contain significant levels of iron impurities, but I think even in the worst case those would be low enough to have an insignificant effect. Now I'm really curious too.
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