Unauthorized and privacy‐intrusive human activity watching through Wi‐Fi signals: An emerging cybersecurity threat

Abstract

Summary Nowadays, wireless radio signals are ubiquitous and are around us; some signals pass through us, and some reflect off us. Substantial advancements in recent years demonstrate that such signals are utilized for diverse emerging applications, including people activity, motion watches, healthcare, and so forth. A few questions would be that may raise severe concerns in future cybersecurity and private domains. For example, what if Wi‐Fi signals are utilized to watch a person doings and actions, which are mostly without the person's authorization and authentication. How far such signal utilization can attack privacy intrusively, silently, more particularly, what/where we do, say, command, see, write, draw, go, perform, everything can be known. In this article, we investigate watching human activities by leveraging Wi‐Fi signals and discuss a few application prototypes. We attempt to learn whether or not attackers have the ability to passively watch our Internet activity as well as physical activities and motions through Wi‐Fi. With all‐new advances, one must be aware that cyberattackers may apply unauthorized use of these advances to their benefit. We discuss some of the countermeasures and approaches to mitigate these risks with Wi‐Fi signal leveraging.

CSIPose: Unveiling Body Pose Using Commodity WiFi Devices Through the Wall

“…WiFi devices, ubiquitous in modern daily life, continue their growth with global WiFi device shipments projected to increase at a 20% compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2028 [1]. Despite its convenience and speed, WiFi raises significant privacy concerns [2]. These concerns are amplified by advances in WiFi sensing, particularly through Channel State Information (CSI) [2], [3].…”

“…Despite its convenience and speed, WiFi raises significant privacy concerns [2]. These concerns are amplified by advances in WiFi sensing, particularly through Channel State Information (CSI) [2], [3]. A notable privacy risk is the unauthorized use of WiFi for human sensing.…”