
PowerSpy: Location Tracking Using Mobile Device Power Analysis - epsylon
http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03182
======
peri
I've only scanned this on my phone, not really dug in to the math, but this
strikes me as significantly more serious than the current comments here
suggest.

Low power tracking is a significant part of the motivation behind mesh
networks in other applications, and the authors here are quite familiar from
my school days. I may have more to say in a few hours, but this is likely a
Big Deal.

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joopxiv
"We also assume that enough communication is occurring for the signal strength
to have an effect on power consumption. This is a reasonable assumption, since
background synchronization of data happens frequently in smartphone devices.
Moreover, the driver might be using navigation software or streaming music.
However, at this stage, it is difficult to determine how inconsistent phone
usage across different rides will affect our attacks."

I don't find this assumption to be reasonable at all. There are plenty of days
where my cellular data usage doesn't exceed 1MB because I'm either at home, at
the office or moving between them. Most background synchronization happens
while I'm using WiFi (and stationary). If your location tracking activity
relies on me streaming music while on route, you would probably be better of
waiting outside my apartment and following me around.

I appreciate the fact that other users have different mobile habits, but the
authors didn't convince me that their scenario poses a feasible and
significant threat to privacy.

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lucb1e
Is the app actually available? It is said to be available on the Play Store
after "unblinding" (I assume that means something like after publishing, it
doesn't seem to be an actual word[1]) but presently I cannot find it.

[1] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unblinding](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/unblinding)

~~~
unwind
It's better to search on the base (infinitive) form of verbs, i.e. "unblind"
in this case: [http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/unblind](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/unblind).

I wasn't able to find any record of it being used in connection with Android
applications, though, so it's still just as confusing here.

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sparaker
I think this is a really long article for a relatively very small hack. For
the most part location cannot be obtained, at max i think the victims route
maybe identified with respect to the cell tower its connected to.

------
dm2
Also published by one of the authors:
[http://crypto.stanford.edu/gyrophone/](http://crypto.stanford.edu/gyrophone/)

