On March 25th, 2024 at 12.00 pm Prof. Robin Kravets (UIUC), will hold a seminar on "Anonymizing Wireless Network Discovery" in DEIB Seminar Room "Nicola Schiavoni" (Building 20).

With the demand for anytime, anywhere connectivity comes the potential to track users as they move through the wireless world around them. All of a user’s Wi-Fi-enabled devices have to navigate through the potential public and private networks available to them.
To aid fast discovery of Wi-Fi networks, devices broadcast probe packets containing information such as the MAC address, preferred access points, and vendor-specific configurations. This information, when correlated across probes, can reveal insights about devices and users, such as the type of device being used and the locations they frequently visit. To avoid such leakage, devices utilize MAC randomization to conceal their factory-assigned addresses and break information leakage patterns that can be exploited by attackers. However, MAC randomization alone is insufficient for privacy, including current attack models and our new timing-based attack model. In response to these vulnerabilities, Jittery provides a suite of configuration and timing-related changes that act as defense mechanisms to prevent these timing-based attacks from succeeding.

Prof. Kravets is the head of the Mobius group, which researches communication issues in all types of networks that are challenged by mobility, including IoT ecosystems, wireless LANs, sensor networks, vehicular networks, mobile social networks and personal area networks. Her research focuses on solutions that enable effective power management, connectivity management, data transport, congestion management, location management, routing, and privacy. Prof. Kravets is very active in the Mobile Networking and Communications community, having organized and served on program committees for the top conference over the past 25 years.