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Researchers Use Ordinary WiFi Connections to Create Images of Nearby People and Their Surroundings

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1 week 4 days ago
Science Daily reports: Researchers showed that unencrypted signals routinely exchanged between WiFi devices and routers can be used to create radio-based images of people and recognize them within seconds. In tests involving 197 participants, the system identified individuals with nearly 100% accuracy, even from different angles and regardless of how they walked. "By observing the propagation of radio waves, we can create an image of the surroundings and of persons who are present," says Professor Thorsten Strufe from KASTEL, KIT's Institute of Information Security and Dependability. "This works similar to a normal camera, the difference being that in our case, radio waves instead of light waves are used for the recognition," explains the cybersecurity expert. Because the technique analyzes radio waves moving through a space, a person does not need to have a phone, smartwatch, or other WiFi enabled device with them. "Thus, it does not matter whether you carry a WiFi device on you or not." Even turning off your own device would not necessarily prevent the system from working. "It's sufficient that other WiFi devices in your surroundings are active...." Connected devices routinely send information back to the router to help optimize wireless communication. These signals, known as beamforming feedback information (BFI), are transmitted without encryption, meaning that anyone within range can potentially read them. By analyzing that information, the system can generate images of people from multiple viewpoints. Those images can then be used to determine a person's identity. Once the machine learning model has already been trained to recognize individuals, the identification process takes only a few seconds.

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