Rethinking Wireless Network Management Through Sensor-driven Contextual Analysis

Irshad, Shazal; Rozner, Eric; Bhartia, Apurv; Chen, Bo

doi:10.1145/3376897.3377863

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Since its standardization by the IEEE, Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement (Wi-Fi FTM; IEEE 802.11mc [7]) has seen wide-deployment and adoption in numerous systems [10,13,19,35,41,54], with notable applications such as indoor positioning [11,20,52], as well as vehicular positioning [17]. Rather troubling, the protocol is used for security purposes too, for example, as part of network onboarding of Internet of Things (IoT) devices [23].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy-Preserving Positioning in Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement

Schepers

Ranganathan

2022

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With the standardization of Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement (Wi-Fi FTM; IEEE 802.11mc), the IEEE introduced indoor positioning for Wi-Fi networks. To date, Wi-Fi FTM is the most widely supported Wi-Fi distance measurement and positioning system. In this paper, we perform the first privacy analysis of Wi-Fi FTM and evaluate devices from a wide variety of vendors. We find the protocol inherently leaks location-sensitive information. Most notably, we present techniques that allow any client to be localized and tracked by a solely passive adversary. We identify flaws inWi-Fi FTM MAC address randomization and present techniques to fingerprint stations with firmware-specific granularity further leaking client identity. We address these shortcomings and present a privacy-preserving passive positioning system that leverages existing Wi-Fi FTM infrastructure and requires no hardware changes. Due to the absence of any client-side transmission, our design hides the very existence of a client and as a side-effect improves overall scalability without compromising on accuracy. Finally, we present privacy-enhancing recommendations for the current and next-generation protocols such as Wi-Fi Next Generation Positioning (Wi-Fi NGP; IEEE 802.11az).

show abstract

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy-Preserving Positioning in Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement

Schepers

Ranganathan

2022

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The ubiquitous availability of Wi-Fi networks prompted the design and development of several Wi-Fi-based ranging and positioning techniques [31, 32, 34-36, 50, 59, 61, 63]. After the introduction of Wi-Fi FTM into IEEE 802.11-2016 and several studies [10,26,62] indicating meter-level accuracy in low-multipath environments [24,26], Wi-Fi FTM has seen adoption in numerous systems [8,21,27,29,48,51,64], with notable applications such as indoor positioning [10,30,37,62] and vehicular positioning [27]. Furthermore, positioning requirements for next-generation wireless networks [28] are currently being defined based on Wi-Fi FTM.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Here, there, and everywhere

Schepers

Singh

Ranganathan

2021

Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Today, an increasing number of applications rely on location and proximity information to deliver services. With the introduction of Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) in the IEEE 802.11-2016 standard, Wi-Fi derived location and proximity information will play a key role in many safety-and security-critical applications. For example, Wi-Fi FTM is adopted in Wi-Fi Aware where it enables geo-fencing and mobile identification. In this paper, we perform the first security analysis of Wi-Fi FTM and analyze its security guarantees across the logical and physical layers. We find various weaknesses that enable an attacker to introduce distance reductions and enlargements to any arbitrary attacker-chosen value, requiring commodity hardware only. We perform an evaluation using commercial access points, smartphones, and off-the-shelf Wi-Fi cards, and show that an attacker can manipulate distances with meter-level precision. Furthermore, we highlight the distance manipulation attacks which are independent of any higher-layer cryptographic protection, exposing fundamental limitations to achieving secure distance measurements in the current standard. Finally, we present security recommendations for the design and implementation of Wi-Fi FTM and next-generation positioning protocols. CCS CONCEPTS• Networks → Mobile and wireless security.

show abstract

“…The ubiquitous availability of Wi-Fi networks prompted the design and development of several Wi-Fi-based ranging and positioning techniques [117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125]. After the introduction of Wi-Fi FTM into IEEE 802.11-2016 and several studies [126,127,83] indicating meter-level accuracy in low-multipath environments [83,128], Wi-Fi FTM has seen adoption in numerous systems [129,130,131,132,86,133,134], with notable applications such as indoor positioning [102,127,126,135] and vehicular positioning [86]. Furthermore, positioning requirements for next-generation wireless networks [88] are currently being defined based on Wi-Fi FTM.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since its standardization by the IEEE, Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement (Wi-Fi FTM; IEEE 802.11mc [82]) has seen wide-deployment and adoption in numerous systems [129,130,131,132,133,134], with notable applications such as indoor positioning [102,127,126], as well as vehicular positioning [86]. Rather troubling, the protocol is used for security purposes too, for example, as part of network onboarding of Internet of Things (IoT) devices [84].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards rapid prototyping for wi-fi security research

Schepers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The rapid deployment of wireless networks, combined with an increasing demand for performance and security, resulted in the significant evolution of standards. Today, ) and Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) are the latest standard and set of security protocols. In order to enhance the security protections offered by these networks, it remains key to adopt the newest standards and promptly deprecate any old and vulnerable protocols. With this perspective, and the knowledge that early research in new protocols allows us to identify and address shortcomings before they are widely-adopted in practice, we are motivated to perform rigorous security and privacy analyses.In this dissertation, we perform an extensive wireless survey to understand and contextualize the Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) landscape. It allows us to gain real-world insights in the adoption rates of deprecated, recommended, and state-of-the-art protocols, and thereby identify trends and determine their security impact in practice. Based on our newfound insights, we perform a security and privacy analysis on the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement (FTM), revealing a wide-variety of sidechannels and security vulnerabilities. In order to ease and streamline our research process, and address implementation challenges faced throughout, we design a novel framework for rapid prototyping. Our framework allows one to rapidly test hypothesis on new weaknesses, implement proof-of-concepts, build on-target fuzz-testing tools, create testing suites (e.g., test if a device is vulnerable to known attacks), and automate experiments. We then demonstrate the features of our framework by means of two practical use cases. First, we perform a security analysis on the Wi-Fi Management Frame Protection (MFP) standard and its implementations, revealing numerous deauthentication vulnerabilities. Second, we analyze frame queuing mechanisms used within access points, revealing vulnerabilities which enable an adversary to bypass encryption. Finally, we release our framework for rapid prototyping to the community in order to encourage and support further security and privacy research.

show abstract

Rethinking Wireless Network Management Through Sensor-driven Contextual Analysis

Cited by 4 publications

References 27 publications

Privacy-Preserving Positioning in Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement

Privacy-Preserving Positioning in Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement

Here, there, and everywhere

Towards rapid prototyping for wi-fi security research

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About