WaveDigger: Dig into wireless signals to discover their physical locations

88 points by 882542F3884314B a day ago on hackernews | 14 comments

Cool. This'll go nicely with my hackslab and tinfoil hat upgrade.

Interesting, wondering why Apple doesn't restrict the queries to its server using a certificate that would be pinned on the devices, etc, so at least you would need a legit iPhone/Mac to be able to do a query?

: mcculley | 4 hours ago
Are you imagining some certificate unique to each device? What would prevent someone copying it?

drnick1 | 7 hours ago

I started rotating my BSSID weekly after I learned Apple and Google abused it to track the location of people and devices.

Permanent hardware or software IDs, such as the Windows GUID or machine-id on Linux (systemd) are inevitably abused for surveillance sooner or later.

: S0und | 6 hours ago
You have all the good intentions, but since no one else does this around your location, I don't think you're achieving anything.
: skinfaxi | 3 hours ago
How do you coordinate across all of your devices?
: astrange | 3 hours ago
You mean, they used it so people trying to use their maps apps didn't have to wait several minutes for a cold GPS fix?
: XorNot | 2 hours ago
The same physical location showing a different SSID every week but the surrounding ones not changing would be deanonymizing you much more aggressively.
People mostly don't change SSIDs or even move networking hardware - e.g. AirBnBs.
Edit: and also are you still carrying a smart phone while doing this? The device which has GPS and a cloud internet connection?

luma | 6 hours ago

Looks like an open version of SkyHook from way back in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless

For a while they had a paid program, I had a Windows Mobile app I could run with an external GPS dongle that would record wifi APs and location, upload to skyhook, who would occasionally cut me a check for my trouble. I made tens of dollars!

: Mashimo | 4 hours ago
Ohhh, there was money to be made with war driving? I just got points on a German bb forum.

anigbrowl | 6 hours ago

Isn't this just wha WIGLE does?

jcims | 5 hours ago

Basically except it's using an Apple service for the backend.

Which will likely get cut off at some point.

: mcculley | 4 hours ago
Why would it be cut off? Doesn’t Apple use this on devices?

totetsu | an hour ago

This talk seems to give a good introduction to bssid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlbjUvkoyBA