Surveilling the Masses with Wi-Fi-Based Positioning Systems

arXiv:2405.14975v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Wi-Fi-based Positioning Systems (WPSes) are used by modern mobile devices to learn their position using nearby Wi-Fi access points as landmarks. In this work, we show that Apple's WPS can be abused to create a privacy threat on a global scale. We present an attack that allows an unprivileged attacker to amass a worldwide snapshot of Wi-Fi BSSID geolocations in only a matter of days. Our attack makes few assumptions, merely exploiting the …

access access points apple arxiv attack can cs.cr cs.ni devices global learn mobile mobile devices nearby points positioning privacy scale systems threat wi-fi work wps