Using neural networks to solve inverse-scattering problems (like wifi scattering off a human body, for example) seems to have a lot of potential. The lack of phase-information (i.e. not just signal intensity but instantaneous phase of the EM wave) captured by traditional receivers makes this class of problems so difficult to approach since you are blind to a significant portion of the available EM information. Mitigating this by constraining your solution-space to 'reasonable' outcomes is practically very difficult... for a human. Very cool to see such a practical demonstration of a neural network seeming to accomplish exactly this.
> Imagine that someone wants to illegally track the position of a person inside a laboratory, for instance to measure how much time is spent doing different activities at different desks, as depicted in the upper picture. How effective can this attack be? ... With CSI-MURDER, the localization becomes impossible because results will seem random, thus preserving the person privacy without destroying Wi-Fi communications.
I was looking into this recently, because I recalled seeing the video of this on Twitter a few years back and wanted to see if I could reproduce it. But the WiFi signal strength tools they used appear to be abandonware, and according to this researcher they may not have even accomplished this task at all: https://medium.com/@tsardoz/researchers-misrepresenting-the-...
Actually I last month reviewed also a wifi sensing paper and somehow it also did not really elaborate on the validation scheme. It seems that still some better standards need to be estaished. Often it is to good to be true.
I hope folks understand what this means - there will be an IEEE standard that makes using Wi-Fi sensing, to some degree, hardware agnostic and thereby drives it into mainstream.
Does anyone know of a way to replicate these results at home, even at lower fidelity? I've never found code I could run and it seems to always involve extra bespoke antennas/drivers.
The same way police go directly to Amazon to get home security camera footage from Nest devices, they will be able to work with your ISP (if you rent a modem-router-ap) or cloud-based-network-gear provider to pull this data from people's houses when serving no-knock warrants or investigate crimes.
You mean ring? Nest is a google property. Doesn’t even use aws, so pretty sure Amazon would just give the police a dumb look if they were asked for footage from nest cameras. Also last I checked nest was one of the better players in this regard requiring warrants and had rigid public data retention processes in place to limit what could be pulled.
but seriously, ISPs can already provide MAC addresses of all active client devices at the building at any time, no need to tell the dog from the owner puzzle by sci-fi tech.
I think that this would primarily have military/police applications. Being able to tell in real time where the people in confined space are just by hacking their WiFi sounds invaluable.
Hundreds of public research papers include terms like these:
human-to-human interaction recognition
device-free human activity recognition
occupant activity recognition in smart offices
emotion sensing via wireless channel data
CSI learning for gait biometric sensing
sleep monitoring from afar
human breath status via commodity wifi
device-free crowd sensing
I find these applications intriguing for VR/AR/XR, but there are also the privacy concerns. I can see internet providers and big tech really wanting to leverage this data for profit
the privacy concerns are really something. Background emission is pretty much as abundant as ambient light these days, at least within the radius of day-to-day living. even in less developed countries. Western signals intelligence gathering already reached critical mass, the decision to deploy dragnets collecting the tons of data we all produce every day, has already been made.
Just frightening to think about the never ending increase in detail and variation when it comes to the data to be collected.
but look, 300 bucks for the privilege of inviting a self-propelled LiDAR scanner, complete with internet connection and non-optional user registration, into your domicile! It can vacuum too? Sound like a deal to me!
I'm less worried about the govt surveillance and more so about abusive advertising, though I wonder how much additional insights it will really provide. The amount the data brokers and scientists can infer already is pretty astounding
I wonder if at some point the amount of data each individual produce would be so large and contradicting that it would be almost unusable by all but the most advance tech department and with great resources.
I mean, why should any scientist think about ethics? [INSERT $GOLDBLUM_QUOTE HERE]
Also, when you start to invent new technology, you're not just a dispassionate objective scientist pushing the boundaries of knowledge. You're an engineer whose products are also engineering society.
I'm not faulting the the scientists here, they aren't the first to do this. I remember seeing similar from a US university research a few years back. This reminded me about the latest wifi-6E(?) that's going to make this easier for ISPs to obtain similar tracking capabilities.
I for one always own my wifi/modem stack rather then renting the one from the ISP
The one I recall trained on wifi and video at the same time, then did inference on only the wifi, with good reports. It was one of those research papers that all the media covered
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38466715
CSI counter-measures
http://www.orca-project.eu/
(2021) https://ans.unibs.it/projects/csi-murder/
> Imagine that someone wants to illegally track the position of a person inside a laboratory, for instance to measure how much time is spent doing different activities at different desks, as depicted in the upper picture. How effective can this attack be? ... With CSI-MURDER, the localization becomes impossible because results will seem random, thus preserving the person privacy without destroying Wi-Fi communications.
Archive link: https://archive.is/MnOv0
but seriously, ISPs can already provide MAC addresses of all active client devices at the building at any time, no need to tell the dog from the owner puzzle by sci-fi tech.
A passive receiver outside a wall can sense reflections passing through the wall, from the transmitter inside. Applies to neighbors and adversaries.
Imagine Streetview sensing cars, capturing not only home exteriors, but interiors.
Just frightening to think about the never ending increase in detail and variation when it comes to the data to be collected.
but look, 300 bucks for the privilege of inviting a self-propelled LiDAR scanner, complete with internet connection and non-optional user registration, into your domicile! It can vacuum too? Sound like a deal to me!
Also, when you start to invent new technology, you're not just a dispassionate objective scientist pushing the boundaries of knowledge. You're an engineer whose products are also engineering society.
I for one always own my wifi/modem stack rather then renting the one from the ISP