NatSci 802.11x WiFi Tracker Zeroes In On Users

securitas writes "Techweb reports that IT admins can now track and physically locate 802.11x WLAN users within a few feet using the new Wi-Fi Tracker hardware from National Scientific, based on its DarkStar wireless product. NSC's site says it will also produce tracking-only 'tag or badge' formats so admins are not limited to tracking active WLAN users and equipment. The company is now shipping development kits to its first customers and a technical specs PDF is available. The product incorporates Ekahau triangulation software. This is reminiscent of an earlier Slashdot story about office surveillance using 802.11b triangulation to track and determine the location of wireless network users."

Comments

Great news!

[Bender_]

This is really great news for all online gamers, because this allows games like features in this article further down the top page without losing all your money to your wireless provider.

Just imagine all the geeky reallife RPGs you can build using this technique!

Well, damn.

[Tuxedo Jack]

There goes my plan to wardrive around my city next year and shamelessy exploit^H^H^H^H^H^Hassist the BitTorrent network.

How can they do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have a really cheap 802.11 if it's leaking electro-magnetic waves.

Re:How can they do that?

[TedCheshireAcad]

OMG u are so dumb. 802.11 wireless networking technology uses RADIO not ELECTRO-MAGNETIC waves!!!

lololol

:P

Well..

[Sir Pallas]

Well, maybe my boss will be intrigued to discover that I am sitting on a couch using my laptop instead of sitting at a desk using my desktop; but I can think of interesting games that one can play with this kind of technology. I mean, if you hook this thing up to a wearable computer, first person shooters could be a lot more first person. Will companies be tracking the movement of wardrivers that normally track companies' bad security policies?

Heh...

[Tuxedo Jack]

I wonder if we can put tinfoil hats on our 802.11 emitters?

And yes, I know.

Re:What does it take?

[Null_Packet]

AFAIK, the signal strength metric from almost any card is different from any other, making it a highly arbitrary number from vendor to vendor. With that said, Kismet (www.kismetwireless.net) offers the ability to store signal strength and do some nifty triangulation with GPS.

I am interested to see if the product in question can be used indoors for traingulation. Without a usable gps signal, you'd have to calibrate known locations and that seems out of the range of the Dark Star's ability.

FWIW, I spoke at ToorCon in San Diego this last fall on the subject of using a directional antenna and a fluxgate (electronic) compass. We did some coding and quite a bit of hardware hacking, and we didn't get far because one sensor cost around $1400 in raw materials and hardware tests to get one built.

Google for Cassandra or e-mail me if you're still interested.

Active badge

[yanboss]

A bit like:
Office tracking as already in use.

Spyware time

[77Punker]

Now I imagine the Gov't will start giving free Wi-Fi access just to have a little better big-brother type of hold on us here in the "land of liberty". *sigh*

Am I the only one ...

[petabyte]

... that just had a vision of Igon walking around with a PKE meter searching for "hotspots".

Maybe I watched too many cartoons as a kid ...

IANAEE

[boobsea]

I'm not an Electrical Engineer, but would this system be able to tell where I am located if I'm using something like a yagi or parabolic dish from several miles away?

What if I had a multi-antenna setup pointing my signal at different APs? To make the thing more confusing, what if I had attenuators or amplifiers on some of those antennas?

Re:IANAEE

[rcw-home]

I'm not an Electrical Engineer, but would this system be able to tell where I am located if I'm using something like a yagi or parabolic dish from several miles away?

A directional antenna is like a flashlight. It's pretty easy to find someone shining a flashlight at you. To answer your second question, it's no harder to find someone using multiple flashlights.

Once you know the general direction, you can drive there, and once you get close enough, there will be more than enough signal from the antenna's sidelobes to finish the triangulation.

For what it's worth, you only need triangulation to determine range. It's possible to determine the direction of a signal without pointing directional antennas around while looking at signal meters. By putting two dipoles a known distance away from each other and comparing the phase of the returned signal (like humans do with their ears) they can determine direction - with a third dipole, or by rotating the array, they can determine whether the signal is in front or behind them.

For more information on this, google search for some combination of "foxhunt", "radio direction finding", "RDF", or "TDOA".

Re:IANAEE

[LostCluster]

Well, such a system, in theory, would have at at least be able to detect monkey business when it sees it...

A yagi from miles away would hit one access point, and only one access point. However, this system requires that all authorized transmitters hit at least two if not three access points. It's going to be sure where this person is, but it can be sure where this person isn't... Remember, the first step in dealing with a hack is realizing you've been hacked. The hacker's traffic flags itself for attention this way.

A multi-antenna setup might stand a chance of properly simulating a spot on the map by sending the right signal strengths to the right access points. However, that ruse would have one critcal weakness... a physical check of the spot being highlighted on the map would find no user there. Again, no accurate clue as to where the hacker is coming from, but a definite indication that there is a hacker. Any other combination would result in a combination of signal strengths that result in an inability to resolve to a point, but that again results in a sign of trouble.

Yeah, this system could be fooled... but coloring outside the lines would at least draw attention to a problem.

I'll be across the street at a local coffee bar!

[csoto]

Whenever I have to write up presentations or work on code, I disappear to this place for hours at a time, but magically, work gets done (free wireless, and decent, if not super speedy, net connectivity). I think smart managers (I'm one of them) understand that sitting in a cubie 8 hours per day does not consitute "putting in a day's work." WiFi lets us be the most productive we can be, no matter where we are. Sometimes, that means leaving the office.

Re:What does it take?

[LostCluster]

Why do the known points have to be relative to GPS? Calibration relative to known points on the office property is good enough... there's a lot of knowledge in knowing if a user is in the warehouse or the parking lot next to the warehouse.

I'm confused....

[davburns]

I read the NatSci article (Yes, I know...) and it looks like this is just a wi-fi device that knows where it is, to be used to track things that its attached to.

The techweb article seems to imply that something would locate any wi-fi device, which would be nice for tracking down wireless misbehavior.

Did I miss something?

Re:What does it take

[pagz]

I work in the mobile computing lab at Rutgers ( http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/dataman )

one of the projects I work on is indeed localization based. We were working on Berkeley's Mica MOTES and have an algorithm APS which can as the above poster stated use a relative coordianate system. However in reference to the article ranging based on signal strength is worthless (based on my own research and experience). Strength fluctuates too much to give a good equation for trianglulation. On the mote hardware the signal strength is a type decreasing amplitude sin function. So yes signal strength goes down as range increases but not cleanly. With a given strength you could be 5 feet, 13 feet or 35 feet away from the base station. This is probably not going to work very well in office use as metal also really screws with wireless signals (Anyone at MobiCom2003 see my APS demo there and wonder why the hell the board was proped up on coffee mugs? a metal band running around the table was carrying the radio signal around the damn table)

So in short I really doubt this will be a boon to wireless sys admins

Dang!

[utlemming]

Something tells me that the testing center is going to get one of these things real fast --

Testing Center Employee: "Excuse me sir, we have detected that you are using a Palm Pilot to access 'TestAnswers.com'"

Me: "Ah crap!" (Beeline for the door.)

Military applications

[Wag]

What does this mean for US warships that use Wi-Fi?