MACaddress
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JFK installs phone-tracking beacons to better estimate wait times
More than 19 million travellers pass through JFK airport each year. That leads to a lot of standing around in lines, either waiting to get through customs or waiting for baggage at the carousel -- even just getting a cab. So, to improve the queuing experience for passengers, JFK airport is rolling out a beacon-based wait time estimation system.
City of London says no to public recycling bins that track smartphones in pedestrian pockets
Many have grown comfortable with the targeted ads that populate the modern web and expect companies to keep track of their online activity, but UK firm Renew took things one step further earlier this summer. It began tracking real world traffic on the streets of London by recording the MAC addresses of the phones that passed by some of the many public recycling bins it operates in the city." Today, however, the City of London Corporation demanded that the tracking stop while a determination is made by the Information Commissioner's Office whether the technology complies with the UK's Data Protection Act. The bins themselves are equipped with WiFi and screens that display a rotating series of ads, and this summer, a dozen of those bins began to record the MAC address of any nearby phones with WiFi turned on. Doing so allows Renew to determine repeat passers-by, how quickly pedestrians are moving so that ads displayed on the bins can be better targeted to the surrounds foot traffic. However, owners of those phones were not notified that their handset's MAC addresses were recorded. For its part, Renew explained in a blog post that the tracking was done on a trial basis and MAC addresses were anonymized and aggregated so that personal information was not recorded. Quartz reports that during the first month of tracking, over one million unique devices were recorded, however, and that over 100,000 phones were identified during the trial's busiest day. What say you, dear readers: want trash cans tracking the surrounding foot traffic in the name of serving you ads targeted to your tastes?
Clear iSpot's device filtering falls to the hackers in near record time
We have absolutely no idea what this means for iSpot owners' service plans if they go through with this -- for all we know, they'll detect un-iPad-like amounts of usage and threaten to up your monthly fee -- but if you're the risky type and you've got an iSpot lying around, its pesky MAC filtering can be a thing of the past with just a tiny bit of effort. There's a blog out there that now has concise instructions posted for gaining root access on the hotspot and tweaking config files to obliterate the MAC filter and enable USB tethering (by default it'll only do WiFi), but if that's too much effort for you, another site -- cheekily named "iSpot instant jailbreak" -- just hooks you up with a binary that you can upload to the iSpot to take care of the filtering in one fell swoop. Again, proceed with caution, because it's anyone's guess how Clear is going to take all this. [Thanks, Travis] Update: We've pulled the iSpot instant jailbreak link after hearing reports that it might be doing more harm than good -- and there might even be some malicious intent involved because it apparently opens a backdoor that allows remote access to the admin console. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of device hacking, folks. Update 2: The creator of the iSpot instant jailbreak just reached out to us know that the remote admin issue was "an error on [his] part" and that the latest version of the config file has it removed; we've re-added the link to it, but as always with these sorts of things, use caution here and be ready for potential flakiness.
Researchers use Bluetooth to track festival goers, make fun of their 'hippie dancing'
A team from the University of Ghent in Belgium is lacing the site of this year's Rock Werchter festival -- Brussel's equivalent of Woodstock '97 -- with Bluetooth scanners (36 total, they cover a range of 30 meters each). While you're rocking out to the likes of Bloc Party and Mastodon, the researchers will be tracking your every movement, whether it be to the mosh pit, the beer tent, or the Job Johnny. As you've probably assumed, the researchers are primarily looking for ways that retailers can monitor customer flow (read: sell you more crap) although there are certainly going to be results applicable to the world of law enforcement. Of course, this is Bluetooth: you always have the option of disabling it on your phone, and if you don't they'll only be able to discern your MAC address. Besides, if you're not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to fear from the surveillance state -- right? And if you are up to no good, well, that's why they invented the Dazer Lazer.
Unique "transceiverprints" to halt MAC spoofing
Hey, all you hotshots who love to spoof your WiFi MAC address just to drive your network admins up the wall -- your days are numbered. (Quick refresher: a MAC address is a unique digital string of numbers and letters attached to every network device, and it never changes when you change networks, unlike an IP address. It's often used for extra security in networks to only allow certain Ethernet/WiFi cards -- but this signature can be pretty easily faked.) And if you're already drafting ways to defat this technique, you may want to consult with Dr. Jeyanthi Hall, of Carelton University in Ottawa, who discovered that every wireless device produced has a unique signal fingerprint determined at the time of production. She analyzed radio signals from 15 devices between six different manufacturers and was able to correctly identify 95 percent of the "transceiverprints," with zero false positives. Maybe Dr. Hall should collaborate with that leather hat hacker guy who built the ultimate WiFi hacking box -- then they'd really have a product the US Government would be interested in.[Via Slashdot]
