Raspberry Pi-Powered Anti-Tracking Tool Checks If You're Being Followed (wired.com) 79
Matt Edmondson, a hacker and digital forensics expert, built a Raspberry Pi-powered anti-tracking tool that "scans for nearby devices and alerts you if the same phone is detected multiple times within the past 20 minutes," reports Wired. The device, which can be carried around or placed in a car, consists of parts that cost around $200 in total. From the report: The homemade system works by scanning for wireless devices around it and then checking its logs to see whether they also were present within the past 20 minutes. It was designed to be used while people are on the move rather than sitting in, say, a coffee shop, where it would pick up too many false readings. The anti-tracking tool, which can sit inside a shoebox-sized case, is made up of a few components. A Raspberry Pi 3 runs its software, a Wi-Fi card looks for nearby devices, a small waterproof case protects it, and a portable charger powers the system. A touchscreen shows the alerts the device produces. Each alert may be a sign that you are being tailed. The device runs Kismet, which is a wireless network detector, and is able to detect smartphones and tablets around it that are looking for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections. The phones we use are constantly looking for wireless networks around them, including networks they've connected to before as well as new networks.
Edmondson says Kismet makes a record of the first time it sees a device and then the most recent time it was detected. But to make the anti-tracking system work, he had to write code in Python to create lists of what Kismet detects over time. There are lists for devices spotted in the past five to 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, and 15 to 20 minutes. If a device appears twice, an alert flashes up on the screen. The system can show a phone's MAC address, although this is not much use if it's been randomized. It can also record the names of Wi-Fi networks that devices around it are looking for -- a phone that's trying to connect to a Wi-Fi network called Langley may give some clues about its owner. "If you have a device on you, I should see it," he says. In an example, he showed WIRED that a device was looking for a network called SAMSUNGSMART.
To stop the system from detecting your own phone or those of other people traveling with you, it has an "ignore" list. By tapping one of the device's onscreen buttons, it's possible to "ignore everything that it has already seen." Edmondson says that in the future, the device could be modified to send a text alert instead of showing them on the screen. He is also interested in adding the capability to detect tire-pressure monitoring systems that could show recurring nearby vehicles. A GPS unit could also be added so you can see where you were when you were being tracked, he says. [...] Edmondson has no plans to make the device into a commercial product, but he says the design could easily be copied and reused by anyone with some technical knowledge. Many of the parts involved are easy to obtain or may be lying around the homes of people in tech communities. For those interested, Edmondson open-sourced its underlying code and plans to present the research project at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week.
Edmondson says Kismet makes a record of the first time it sees a device and then the most recent time it was detected. But to make the anti-tracking system work, he had to write code in Python to create lists of what Kismet detects over time. There are lists for devices spotted in the past five to 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, and 15 to 20 minutes. If a device appears twice, an alert flashes up on the screen. The system can show a phone's MAC address, although this is not much use if it's been randomized. It can also record the names of Wi-Fi networks that devices around it are looking for -- a phone that's trying to connect to a Wi-Fi network called Langley may give some clues about its owner. "If you have a device on you, I should see it," he says. In an example, he showed WIRED that a device was looking for a network called SAMSUNGSMART.
To stop the system from detecting your own phone or those of other people traveling with you, it has an "ignore" list. By tapping one of the device's onscreen buttons, it's possible to "ignore everything that it has already seen." Edmondson says that in the future, the device could be modified to send a text alert instead of showing them on the screen. He is also interested in adding the capability to detect tire-pressure monitoring systems that could show recurring nearby vehicles. A GPS unit could also be added so you can see where you were when you were being tracked, he says. [...] Edmondson has no plans to make the device into a commercial product, but he says the design could easily be copied and reused by anyone with some technical knowledge. Many of the parts involved are easy to obtain or may be lying around the homes of people in tech communities. For those interested, Edmondson open-sourced its underlying code and plans to present the research project at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week.
Because.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Because.... (Score:4, Insightful)
WiFi and Bluetooth are needed to track someone... /S
Yup, those are a couple of trees, but let's recognize the forest. Someone felt the need to invent a cheap anti-tracking device for citizens, which we already know there's demand for such a product.
And ironically, Black Hat/DEFCON proved that WiFi can work a hell of a lot farther than damn near any traditional tracking.
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Someone felt the need to invent a cheap anti-tracking device for citizens, which we already know there's demand for such a product.
Says you. I'm holding out for the version that detects eagles [youtube.com].
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Monitor mode is a beautiful thing
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https://www.thesecuritybuddy.com/bluetooth-security/what-is-car-whisperer/ [thesecuritybuddy.com]
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WiFi and Bluetooth are needed to track someone... /S
Needed? No. But people who track others are just that. People. People who by-n-large don't think about the consequences of what they do, such as not disable wifi and bluetooth on their mobile phone while following someone, because why would they? It's not like the trackers are being tracked.
Yeah this is easily defeated, but you need to think about doing so first.
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Why would this work? Surely the same people who decided to implement MAC randomization will do the same thing for Bluetooth. My only question is does his application track you by the network names you're broadcasting, or by the characteristics of your transmitted signal?
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Why do you assume you're being tracked by a phone? You do realize things like AirTags exist, right? They're stupidly cheap devices that you can surreptitiously hide on someone or something. They don't require anyone to actually physically fo
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Why do you assume you're being tracked by a phone? You do realize things like AirTags exist, right? They're stupidly cheap devices that you can surreptitiously hide on someone or something. They don't require anyone to actually physically follow you around and they're easily hidden and potentially hard to detect.
Now, Apple does take steps to try to make their tag more obvious, but there are countermeasures to those, and there are tags by other companies who don't do those things.
Given the relative uselessness of the AirTag app on Android, something like this could be useful to detect such things and be useful in the future.
How? If the next version of AirTag randomizes its ID, how you you ever determine that you're being tracked, without parking your car in a sealed steel box and then probing for AirTags?
Besides, in my case, I only move my eyes and fingers for hours on end (unless your tracker can tell that I'm breathing, its going to think I'm sleeping or dead).
Re: Because.... (Score:2)
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Airtags use Bluetooth so need to monitor Bluetooth also.
Re: Because.... (Score:2)
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WiFi and Bluetooth are needed to track someone... /S
I don't think they're trying what you think they're trying. It says it's designed to be on the move and it notifies you if the same wireless device is around with the standard settings, announcing itself.
It's the same thing as looking around the room for the same person . . . except it's simplified and more precise.
Yes, savvy stalkers will have this stuff off, but most people that follow other people won't necessarily be smart enough to have all of that shut down.
A little more privacy in one's daily li
coworkers (Score:2)
Man, I work with a bunch of stalkers. This thing finds them around me all the time!
Re: coworkers (Score:2)
Procuct (Score:1)
What might be useful is a gadget that watched for incoming calls to your phone. It could tell you who was trying to call and let you leave your phone off almost all the time. I know it would be hard technically because the towers have to ping your phone to connect.
A spouse detector? (Score:2)
Yup, it will work for this too! ;-)
self detection? (Score:2)
And probably can detect similar devices nearby or are all the radios only receiving?
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Re: self detection? (Score:2)
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Sure, but not by the same means by which it works, and also the relevant frequency bands are downright crowded so it's questionable whether you could reasonably track such a quiet spur.
Re: self detection? (Score:2)
If it transmitted it would most likely be auto added to the ignore list. Otherwise, file it as a bug.
Been needing this for my neighbors (Score:2)
So we can learn the ID's of our neighbors and can tell when they've just left.
Or houses that may be interesting to visit.
Don't Android and iOS randomize MAC addresses? (Score:2)
The device runs Kismet, which is a wireless network detector, and is able to detect smartphones and tablets around it that are looking for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections. The phones we use are constantly looking for wireless networks around them, including networks they've connected to before as well as new networks.
I thought both Android [android.com] and iOS [apple.com] randomize the MAC addresses used for both their wifi and Bluetooth scans, specifically to prevent being tracked by them. (Which is what the "anti-tracker" is doing, after all, tracking devices that are near you.)
Pretty sure if they see a known network they both switch to their "real" MAC address, so I suppose that would work. But while "on the move" they should be using randomized MAC addresses.
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Re:Don't Android and iOS randomize MAC addresses? (Score:5, Interesting)
No it doesn't. My family's phones (at least, those running Android 10 and up) randomize their MACs every time they connect to our home WiFi. I wrote a little program to grab the DHCPACK log entries from my router, and then announce the arrival of people on an RPi with Festival TTS. I have to use the network/device name, instead of the MAC for the phones for this reason.
Incidentally, my daughter's boyfriend is an iOS guy, and I actually have to use his MACs (iPhone and iWatch) to detect him, because he uses a SPACE character for his device names. I don't know what version of iOS he's running, but his MACs are NOT randomized.
The kids don't know how I'm detecting them -- they actually think I have face recognition running with security cams.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Then, here's the command I push to the RPi when my phone connects:
omxplayer --no-keys -o hdmi --no-osd
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That's awesome!!! Especially about the kids thinking you're doing it with cameras and face detection.
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I also have a OnePlus 8T, which used to randomize every connection to WiFi, including known networks. With the latest OxygenOS update, that has stopped, and it now uses the same "random" MAC address each time it connects to a known WiFi.
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my daughter's boyfriend is an iOS guy, and I actually have to use his MACs (iPhone and iWatch) to detect him, because he uses a SPACE character for his device names
There has to be more to this story. You can't just quote the device names?
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- Person's name
- device name
- list of random commands to push when the person arrives (it chooses one each time)
- list of commands and ALL get executed when the person arrives
(eg. kodi-send --host=treader -a "Notification(ichthus,has arrived,10000)) will display a message on one of kodi's in my home.
- And finally, a minimum time, in seconds, that each person has t
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This is called being a Great Dad.
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> People are using Apple AirTags (and other similar devices) to track people they know. This is actively happening today.
Actually Apple has protection for this.
AirTags work by connecting (via BlueTooth, or Ultra Wideband) to the nearest iPhone, then from there into the cloud and back to the owner's IPhone. If the owner is near the AirTag (e.g. use in their own home to find keys, etc, then it doesn't need to hop via a stranger's phone).
So, if someone has planted an AirTag on you, or your car, etc, to trac
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What if you don't have an iPhone?
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If you're really that paranoid (maybe with reason - abusive ex) of being tracked, then maybe buy a used iPhone to be able to detect it?
Certainly tech has opened up all sorts of privacy concerns from AirTags to geo-tagged photos being posted online, computers being hacked, etc.... This is the world we now live in.
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Your phone can already do that.
Re:Dongle (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't our phones already do the same scanning/logging as in the article? What's necessary in this hardware package?
Can't this be done by a smartphone app? (Score:1)
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I can see why. The device needs to be able to listen to the transmission *of other devices* when they query for access points. Not just scan available AP's around. This requires the wifi-card to be in monitor mode, which is not accessible to apps, nor on the pi itself. Hence the need for an external wifi adapter.
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I know the pi can run in AP mode because I've set one up like that to give to a family member who didn't have WiFi, to use as a Kodi server. The need for an external WiFi adapter is most likely the result of some lazy coding (probably reusing someone else's code without understanding how it works).
On a side note, the tin-foil-hat folks clearly had mod points last evening. This is why I don't post with a karma bonus, never know when you're gonna piss off someone with mod points who participated in Jan 6th,
good idea, but too much device (Score:2)
It needs to run on a zero w, for which you can get a credible e-ink display for around $15.
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Well, I'd also say that "shoebox sized" is a bit ridiculous for such a device in this day and age.
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I'm sure if he had a design fab rather than just cobbling together off the shelf parts and putting them in a box it wouldn't be shoebox sized.
When the $5 versions start showing up on Alibaba it'll be the size of a thumb drive, don't worry.
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That would be great, but the problem is first you would have to actually obtain a Zero W.
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That would be great, but the problem is first you would have to actually obtain a Zero W.
They're all hard to come by, right?
Ding ding ding, we have a winner (Score:2)
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Not everyone has the skills to build such a solution.
They've prototyped a novel idea, other people (like me) can now implement it in a small ESP32-S3 module
What about Airtags? (Score:2)
As I understand it, Airtags use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Can this device detect Airtags? An Airtag placed in clothing or on a vehicle seems like one of the easiest ways to track a person or a thing... it would be great if we could use a Raspberry Pi + some peripherals to reliably detect the ongoing presence of an Airtag. The Wired article mentions them but doesn't actually say if Edmondson's gadget can can detect them.
And I thought the Pi had Wifi and Bluetooth built-in, why does it need the external Wif
Re:What about Airtags? (Score:4, Informative)
Having a wifi dongle with dedicated antennas provides a significant improvement in range over the craptacular wifi reception of the Raspberry Pi's onboard antenna.
And the Pi as well as the bluetooth dongle support BLE, not sure why the bluetooth dongle exists, but maybe the drivers for it are easier to work with than whatever Broadcom ships. I'm speculating here, but you typically need some kind of driver level support to do the things being done here, and open source support is usually very good for cheap Taiwanese dongles.
Apple and Google Covid tools (Score:2)
The fact "some device was near you repeatedly" can be reported I think without any privacy violation. It would be possible to record info of friends, family and work colleagues so they don't get reported. Bus, train and
You're being followed (Score:2)
Because you have a RasPi and are about to get mugged for the unobtanium in your pocket.
Nice idea, easy to simplify (Score:2)
Great idea. I would simplify it down to an ESP32-S3, and a battery. Wifi is used to detect signals; BLE used to send alerts to your phone. That would run for a week on a small LiPol battery, and fit in your pocket.
Great tool for the paranoid! (Score:2)
Will come with tons of false alerts as well. Because quite often people just follow the same path without following a person.
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Oblig... (Score:2)
Spooky (Score:2)
According to this tool, I was being followed by like 100 people on the train to work! They didn't stop following me until we reached our destination. I was, understandably, totally creeped out by this. Worst part is some of them were following me on the train home too, although there were some new followers in that group as well (they seem to be monitoring me in shifts!).
Seems I've got hundreds of restraining orders to pursue.
Kismet (Score:2)
Isn't this
Head slap - of course no one read anything other than the title..
This could be a free app. (Score:2)
... Or even be part of the operating system for the phone, because it's such a native thing that could be very useful.
timely (Score:2)
Bluetooth, WiFi, IMSI, TPMS, etc... (Score:2)
Ideally, you would detect all common wireless signals identifiers... including with Bluetooth, WiFi, IMSI (using stingray-style device), TPMS from car tires, etc...