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Researchers Turn Home Wi-Fi Router Into Spy Device
hypnosec writes "Researchers at University College of London have applied principles of radar used in defense and designed a detector using home based Wi-Fi routers to spy on people across walls. Using the principles behind the Doppler effect ... Karl Woodbridge and Kevin Chetty, at University College London, have built a prototype unit that uses Wi-Fi signals and recognizes frequency changes to detect moving objects. The size of the prototype unit is more or less the size of a suitcase. The unit contains a radio receiver comprising of two antennas and a signal-processing unit. The duo carried out test runs and ... they managed to determine a person's location, speed, and direction (even through a one foot thick brick wall). The device could be used to spot intruders, monitor children or the elderly, and could even be used in military applications."
Would be nice to see how this might be used for good, not just evil.
The tinfoil house will be near us soon. Makes me wonder if the tech will be used as an indication that you "have something to hide" if no signal is detected.
The article gets off to a bad start in the very first sentence:
Rubish. The US Navy did not invent radar as it implies. Nicola Tesla descibed the concept in 1917 and others were playing with similar ideas before then. Sorry. Im not going to bother reading the rest. Isnt there an actual paper on the subject we can read instead of this badly-informed junk?
"...and could even be used in military applications."
The naiveté is overwhelming. Military applications, if even remotely plausible, would be the first to get this technology, not high-tech baby monitors.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
Hi there. NSA here. We'd like to ask everyone to stop copying our ideas. Unfortunately we can't patent them for obvious reasons, but we can block you just as much under the 'National Security' stamp, so just forget about it. Also just letting you know we are pushing for legislation to ban auto-frequency shifting routers and any rapidly moving iron object in the premises that may scatter signals. But for the record; this works just as well with your cordless phone, cellphone, radio controlled car and microwave, so switching of your router really doesn't help you. And since you propagate the radio signals voluntarily the fourth amendment also doesn't apply. (Please don't conclude we care about the constitution - We've had this argument already) Oh yeah, before I forget; dwellings that emit NO radio signals are automatically marked for surveillance and occupants placed on the no-fly list.
whoa, whoa cowboy, slow down there....that last "even" just made the entire rest of the article padded filler to justify what anyone would expect anyway, but seeing it couched in such pathetically blatant terms only makes it stand out all the more. We all saw Real Genius son, we all know how this works, you're not on our side.
If I weren't just a capacitive bag of antenna-tuning water, why I'd... ... um.... er... humpf.
Passive radar has been researched and used for a while now, which is cool. And the reported thing would be cool too, if it would be passive and if it would not require a custom-built active-signal based wifi device with the size of a suitcase which is anything but covert. Also, through-the-wall radars have been used for a time, which don't provide too much detail, but can tell at least the number of moving objects and locate them. Again, this would be quite nice if it wouldn't require the placement of a custom device, or if it does, then it should be quite much smaller and not different in size or looks from any other router you can buy, and then at least they could place them in banks or wherever.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar
Passive radar uses radio sources, like TV and FM stations, instead of having its own transmitter. The receiver detects the direct signal from the transmitter and the signal reflected from the target. The trick is to separate the two. Using the doppler effect does that nicely for moving targets.
The advantage of passive radar is that it can't be detected.
The radar in TFA doesn't need to be undetectable, the targets probably don't have detectors. It could have its own transmitter. That would simplify the receiver design a lot. The transmitter is quite simple and cheap, being a GUNN diode or something like that. It would also require a directional transmitting antenna. Developing such a device would be much cheaper and it would work much better.
Given that the researchers did the job the hard way, their accomplishment is quite impressive. On the other hand, we haven't seen a fully field tested version. There is a large gap between a lab demo under controlled circumstances and an actual useable device.
The mandatory TR-069 my ISP compiled into the router just got worse. It was bad enough I had to put it behind a switch, now I need to tin foil it?
Time to switch ISPs... Oh wait, I can't. It's a monopoly.
The headline is a bit misleading. They did not convert a Wifi station to a spy device, but created a completely separate device to interpret Wifi signals and their reflections in a building.
Finding new ways to spy on people is something we seem to be really good at here in the UK
Now I have to run Wild Weasel missions against my own router.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Of course it is literally impossible to stumble upon the idea of radar technology...
So cheating with wallhacks is bad? Not for a christian -- Jesus abused an item cloning bug himself.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It would certainly help if you're going for the homosexual male friend angle.
I like my women like I like my coffee, with a penis.
So if it uses Wifi-range signals, we could prolly make a "spy device detector" or even "spy device blocker" in dd-wrt?
With everyone using wifi, I don't understand how results could be so accurate. Please enlighten me:)
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Who use Wi-Fi anyway, except when you really have no other choice?
sorry dont use it and i flash my own firmware onto my router every so often to ensure its security isn't being wacked....
yup its a funny thing when you step out into the world....you never know what will happen, the best you can do is to try and be as prepared as you can....and worry not for there are those out there that care.
so you put the pcs you want no signal in a tinfoiled shield iron setup and leave a no mind vulnerable outside to make 'them' ( whom every they are ) thinking your just sheeple....problem solved one can even design bounce back material setups so that said shield just does not register and hte unregistered does.
once again 5 minutes a brain power defeats the evil us spy business....
While it is super neat to see this being done with routers by mere humans, it hardly compares to what our overlords have been doing for a long time. An old friend who was a low-level translator for the NSA (spying on Russians), had once described a patented device which was used for remote eavesdropping. For example, it would use the radiation from something like a television, or a monitor, etc., and through extremely sensitive observation, determine words by the electro-magnetic interference caused by the collision of sound with EM-fields. I'm pretty sure similar principles have been applied to objects for a while too.
Hate me if you will, but I can't remember the name of the apparatus mentioned by my old friend. This excerpt from a pretty interesting documentary about the quiet zone, in Western Virginia, I think fits the subject very well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWqfVq5Wn0I
I definitely want to make one though.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Hello? This is the Police! would you be so kind as to plug the wifi router(s) back in so we can track you?
Reminds me of this 2008 Google Tech Talks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PiMimSrP7A
Radio Shack sold a wireless intruder alarm way back. It transmitted a rf signal and could use that to monitor a room for motion. Somebody figured a wifi router also can do this. neat
I watched an episode of Continuum last night where they used the the signal from a cell tower to map peoples movements and I thought it was the most ridiculous idea in a scifi show ever. I was wrong.
... initiate a call to the perps, precisely triangulate the location of the phone source through common RF firection finding, use passive detection using your own cell and responding perps cell signals (add in others for more precision). Would have been complicated to do once upon a time but tech is there to do it now. Reply to this post if you want to take this idea to market :-)
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Reminds me of the monitoring enabled by the mesh network from Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
Move along, no sig to see here.