A Case Study of WiFi Sniffing Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Mobile devices regularly broadcast WiFi probe requests in order to discover available proximal WiFi access points for connection. A probe request, sent automatically in the active scanning mode, consisting of the MAC address of the device expresses an advertisement of its presence. A realtime wireless sniffing system is able to sense WiFi packets and analyse wireless traffic. This provides an opportunity to obtain insights into the interaction between the humans carrying the mobile devices and the environment. Susceptibility to loss of the wireless data transmission is an important limitation on this idea, and this is complicated by the lack of a standard specification for real deployment of WiFi sniffers. In this paper, we present an experimental analysis of sniffing performance under different wireless environments using off-the-shelf products. Our objective is to identify the possible factors including channel settings and access point configurations that affect sniffing behaviours and performances, thereby enabling the design of a protocol for a WiFi sniffing system under the optimal monitoring strategy in a real deployment. Our preliminary results show that four main factors affect the sniffing performance: the number of access points and their corresponding operating channels, the signal strength of the access point and the number of devices in the vicinity. In terms of a real field deployment, we propose assignment of one sniffing device to each specific sub-region based on the local access point signal strength and coverage area and fixing the monitoring channel belongs to the local strongest access point.

Sensors for Context-Aware Smart Healthcare: A Security Perspective

“…Indeed, a variety of medical devices, including hospital equipment [ 301 ], wearables [ 302 , 303 , 304 , 305 , 306 ] and implantable devices [ 282 , 307 ], have been compromised through eavesdropping, by disclosing private data or serving to obtain insights for further active attacks. Eavesdropping attacks are also common in other popular technologies, namely Wi-Fi and ZigBee [ 308 , 309 ].…”

Cross Layer Design for Wi-Fi Sensor Network Handling Static and Dynamic Environment Using Local Automate Based Autonomic Network Architecture

“…The formation of the network with said delivery rates causes congestion at a large denser network in a dynamic environment [14,15]. Li et al [16] had carried out a case study on performance evaluation for Wi-Fi sniffing that support optimal groups. Further, Khan et al [17] proposed an Optimal Group Formation with content distribution for the entire direct network comprising of large nodes.…”

“…In LA, the initial stage of Wi-Fi process enables user for complete competitive analysis for determining the probability of occurrence of each node. This leads in decisive dead spots that avoids slow and unstable connections [14][15][16]. The inter-interference region can cause decrease in deployment efficiency with more IT investment.…”

Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking

“…Therefore, we propose a scheme employing a combination of the Sigfox Monarch localization service [3,15] and WiFi sniffing [5,16,17]. In this paradigm, once landed, a smart suitcase takes advantage of the available WiFi networks to triangulate its position within tens of meters.…”