Your MAC Address Can be Detected Easily When Your Smartphone Connected to the Wi-Fi

Abstract

In this short paper, we prove that smartphones connected to Wi-Fi can be detected (scanned) easily with a Raspberry Pi help. According to the observation, the smartphone eventually broadcasts some packets of data containing MAC layers data. The period of broadcasting data depends on the smartphone’s state (active scanning/sleep). Besides MAC layers data, we also detect/capture other parameters, i.e., wireless signature data transmitted by smartphone (RSSI) and Time-stamp. The RSSI value measured in this test has a range from –30 dBm to –80 dBm. The result proves that different smartphones give different RSSI values (each smartphone emits different power strength). The RSSI value has more significant changes in a short-range (in this test result, 1 to 10 meters) and less significant change in a long-distance (above 20 meters). MAC address, time-stamp, and RSSI scanned/captured successfully through Raspberry Pi from the smartphones can be used as a reference for various purposes/applications in future work, such as Wi-Fi scanning/tracking system.

A Consumer Product of Wi-Fi Tracker System using RSSI-based Distance for Indoor Crowd Monitoring

“…To address this gap, the focus of this study is to provide a comprehensive design of Wi-Fi tracking system that offers a clearer understanding. The study aims to delve into the different components of system in greater detail compared to previous studies [ [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. It is expected to make it easier for readers to understand the whole system.…”

“…Different smartphone models may have varying time intervals for sending out packet requests, hence, to capture and analyze Wi-Fi data, Tshark, a packet sniffing tool, is utilized. The question of how Tshark analyzed the data was demonstrated in [18].…”

“…The design and development of Wi-Fi tracking system involved conducting intensive preliminary study, which focused on studying the behavior of smartphones during connection. The evaluation was also carried out to determine the suitability of RSSI method for the tracking system [18]. The conducted experiments showed that system could collect important information such as RSSI (Wi-Fi signal strength) and MAC address of the smartphone.…”

“…These two data are the required information that needs to be processed further. When Wi-Fi is enabled on a smartphone, it broadcasts packet request data containing the protocol, channel, and MAC address through Wi-Fi signal [18]. The initial step in implementing Wi-Fi tracking system using RSSI method involved sniffing these data packets and measuring the corresponding RSSI level at each node [19].…”

“…According to the findings in study [18], when smartphones activate their Wi-Fi function and connect to an available Wi-Fi hotspot, they transmit a unique wireless signature known as MAC address. Additionally, the timestamp and RSSI values of smartphones vary depending on their types, models, and vendors.…”