Google Describes Wi-Fi Sniffing In Pending Patent 134
Posted
by
timothy
from the and-in-the-alternative-yer-honor dept.
from the and-in-the-alternative-yer-honor dept.
theodp writes "After mistakenly saying that it did not collect Wi-Fi payload data, Google had to reverse itself, saying, 'it's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks.' OK, mistakes happen. But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets by operating a device — which 'may be placed in a vehicle' — in a 'sniffer' or 'monitor' mode and analyzing them on a server? Guess belated kudos are owed to the savvy Slashdot commenter who speculated back in January that the patent-pending technology might be useful inside a Google Street View vehicle. Google faces inquiries into its Wi-Fi packet sniffing practices by German and US authorities."
Wardriving? (Score:4, Interesting)
A patent?
Isn't that exactly the same thing which wardrivers have been doing since WiFi existed?
WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hm, my netbook + car charger + linux + aircrack-ng does just that.
My archos media player can do likewise.
How can you patent this crap?
Google is full of it (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the original "by mistake" explanation they gave is a load of cr%p. How is it even possible to "collect WiFi information by mistake"? You have to install appropriate hardware and software, run it and then place the results to some sort of a database. Basic though it may be, someone had to do this, do this on all Google street view vehicles and keep it running. We are talking an effort of multiple people. There is absolutely nothing about it that's a mistake.
Now that they've been caught - they are resorting to bold faced lies.
Didn't have much trust in Google until now, but this has gone beyond anything acceptable.
Re:Wifi Sniffing is an old term (Score:3, Interesting)
Wifi Sniffing and wardriving are two overlapping but different concepts. Sniffing is passively capturing wireless LAN traffic, i.e. a very broad term. Wardriving is when a mobile receiver passively captures a specific subset of WLAN traffic, namely the beacon frames, for the purpose of finding and listing but not accessing wireless LANs. What Google supposedly wanted to do was wardriving. What Google actually did was Wifi sniffing.
Re:Misleading summary? (Score:2, Interesting)
How about some prior art ??
http://wigle.net/gps/gps/main/download/ [wigle.net]
This has been running for years
Re:Mr Hyde? (Score:3, Interesting)
pretty useless (please give me any example of how to use this nefariously)
If the payload happened to contain a Google search request, or an HTTP request to a site that sues Google Analytics, then they can correlate this with the other information that they have and go from a cookie (which tells you the things the user has ever searched for) to a specific computer (MAC address) and even to a specific house number. The same if the packet was sent to Google's DNS servers.
Re:No free lunch (Score:1, Interesting)
Tapping into water, power, sewer, and phone means making use of capacity that would otherwise be available to other users. It makes use of infrastructure that someone else owns and has the right to control access to. Decrypting a broadcast signal does not deprive other users of anything.