Establishing Pattern of Life Based on Passive Collection of WiFi Transmissions

WiFi has become a staple service with the growth of home networking, smart devices, IoT, and several devices that utilize WiFi to function.

Recent attempts have been made to enhance devices due to the privacy concerns of passive WiFi collection. Location services, subject identification, or population enumeration were easily captured prior to address randomization.

However, more targeted collections methods are still available in specific applications. Certain characteristics inherently exist in the WiFi protocol that allows attribution to be made, which can be used to identify subjects, their usage on the spectrum, and even give away their physical co-location in a target area. This paper will explore the mechanisms that exist through the passive collection of WiFi signals to build a subject's Pattern of Life (PoL) that persists even through privacy enhancements of address randomization. This research will identify the attributions that remain available for passive capture and that can be used as a tool for enhanced surveillance on a subject. Conversely, the research will inform potential defensive postures to increase OPSEC and PERSEC while utilizing WiFi.