A lot of the time last week was spent on writing the design report. I started working on getting the front end of the project working, which is to do packet sniffing to identify access points, send beacon frames with TIM set up such that all devices connected to that access point responds (in order to quickly get a list of devices in the vicinity), and using those devices’ MAC address to get data such as ToF or RSS. Wi-Peep’s paper suggests that exploiting the TIM should get responses from the devices within the access points fairly quickly, but it seems that my setup is somehow incorrect since it doesn’t reliably work. I will work on getting these parts done next week, along with using the devices’ MAC addresses and picoscenes to get RSS data.
Ethan’s Status Report for 2/25
This week, I worked on getting the Polite Wifi mechanism to work. I got the usb dongle and started working with it, but it was harder than I thought to get it to work, most likely due to driver issues. The dongle had official driver support for windows and mac, but not linux, and there were many different open-source drivers that claimed to work but apparently did not. While trying to make the packet injection work and messing with the driver and network interface settings, the Ubuntu setup I had broke and was not able to boot up, which forced me to reinstall everything I had set up. I also don’t have much experience with wifi in particular, so it took a lot of trial and error to learn how Scapy works, or how to work with the network manager and the network interface in ubuntu (the OS we’re using because PicoScenes only works in a specific ubuntu version with a specific kernel). Eventually with the right drivers and right setup for the network interfaces, I was able to confirm that the polite wifi mechanism did indeed work (shown in the screenshot attached).
Next week, I will work on scripting MAC address sniffing and time measurement with the polite wifi mechanism. I did get some of the orderings mixed up in terms of what I should do according to the schedule, but looking at the number of days I’m not falling behind.
Polite wifi in action:
The packet that was sent via Scapy:
Ethan’s Status Report for 2/18
I wasn’t able to spend much time this week due to conflicting deadlines. I finished setting up picoscenes initially, and then mostly worked on getting the Polite Wifi mechanism to work, but my understanding of Scapy (python library for packet sniffing and injection) is still incomplete and my laptop only has one wifi card than can’t do packet injection and monitoring at once. I needed a wifi usb-dongle for myself anyway, so I ordered one with the same wifi chip used in the paper. Having one would also help with PicoScenes as it requires me to set my one wifi chip in my laptop in monitor mode, which disables me from using the internet. It should be arriving this weekend, with which I would be able to test better.
Despite this week not being too productive, I am still on schedule. For next week, I plan to use Scapy to successfully sniff mac addresses of devices, and also get polite wifi to work. I also will work with PicoScenes to have some scripts that can measure CSI. Courses that helped the design for me were 18-213 and 18-349.
Team Status Report for 2/11
Our proposal presentation was done by Thomas on Monday, 2/6. We worked on getting started on our project after the proposal, which included submitting an order for AX200 wifi card to be used with PicoScenes, conducting further research on our respective areas, and getting PicoScenes set up.
Right now, our biggest concern is making sure all of our hardware will correctly interface together. We have double-checked the documentation and made sure that there will not be too much leg work required, but are still worried we have missed something. Our first chunk of development will happen on a laptop, so other than antennas or the wifi card, we don’t rely on other extra hardware which means getting parts is less of a concern. We’re currently ahead of schedule since this week was reserved for the proposal and initializing. There are no changes to be made to the schedule; likewise, there are no changes to be made to the existing design.
Our project includes considerations for privacy of individuals – our project aims to enable the users to be aware of what kind of IoT devices exist around them, which is especially valuable since IoT devices that can spy on people can be prevalent and hard to detect by visual means; while this may be a concern for locating individuals from their devices, we are building our system assuming access to walk around the space and constant devices, both of which we think will minimize possible harms to individual privacy.
Ethan’s Status Report for 2/11
After helping finishing up the proposal slides, I worked on getting PicoScenes set up on my laptop this week. My laptop happens to have AX210 which PicoScenes can work with, and the initial setup and monitoring works. This week was reserved for the proposals and getting started, so we’re not behind. For next week, I plan to work on further playing around with PicoScenes and scripting. If I get time, I will also work on beacon spoofing that will be used for the WiPeep technique.