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Household occupancy detection for burglary purposes : Risk assessment and effectivity analysis of an unobtrusive, easy-to-implement countermeasure against Wi-Fi tracking.

Kers, T (2018) Household occupancy detection for burglary purposes : Risk assessment and effectivity analysis of an unobtrusive, easy-to-implement countermeasure against Wi-Fi tracking.

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Abstract:Occupancy tracking by eavesdropping on household Wi-Fi networks is barely researched field with the potential of being abused extensively. This risk was assessed by tracking the network in 55 participating households to find the potential of this type of eavesdropping. Due to various problems in this experiment, most datasets were unusable. Definitive conclusions therefore couldn’t be drawn. A countermeasure, not requiring networking protocol changes, was researched as well. Unfortunately MAC randomization with variable transmission power proved to be ineffective in preventing occupancy tracking in generated household network traces. Apart from theoretical usability, implementation of MAC randomization proved difficult to implement without network disruptions or serious changes to networking software. Practical use appeared limited as well as a lot of other weak points remained. Current networking standards also lack feedback for proper transmission power regulation requiring more additional software or creating more connectivity problems. Also, information about the availability of fine-grained power control was lacking for almost all common networking equipment. Although the proposed solution proved inadequate in protecting households, the potential risk of this type of eavesdropping should be explored further. For this, multiple improvements for future research into the posed risk are listed.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Subject:53 electrotechnology, 54 computer science
Programme:Embedded Systems MSc (60331)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/76041
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