See through walls via wireless network

posted Oct 1st 2009 11:46am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: security hacks, wireless hacks

Seeingthroughwalls

Researchers at the University of Utah have been able to detect movement in a room based on variations in wireless signals. Accurate to about a meter, they are using a 34 node wireless network to do their sensing. As a person moves, they change the signals, and can therefore be detected. They state one possible application being rescue workers deploying multiple wireless nodes around a building to find people located inside.

[via Gizmodo]

Comments [22]

tagged: snooping, wireless, xray

Reader Comments

fascinating, this is like the keyboard burst frequency detection that was use to dump keystrokes, cept controlling wifi to do something like infrared.

Posted at 11:53 am on Oct 1st, 2009 by Blizzarddemon

This is awesome! Go Utes!

Posted at 11:59 am on Oct 1st, 2009 by wompninja

Reminds me of those “life form” sensors you see in sci-fi all the time.

Posted at 12:09 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by lumpaloompalue

@blizzarddemon

This is _not_ WiFi.

Posted at 12:13 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by ReKlipz

locate people, if they are moving

Posted at 12:25 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Kiwisaft

I think a FLIR camera is cheaper than 34 wireless nodes. Also a lot more sensitive.

Posted at 12:44 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Noobius

@kiwisaft,
good catch.

Posted at 12:45 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Caleb Kraft

Trust me, this will never be practical.

Posted at 1:05 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Tim

@Tim
Ok, I trust you.

(???)

Posted at 1:37 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by samurai

cool my not be the best way of doing things but still very cool

Posted at 1:40 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by monkeyslayer56

First:cool as hell
Second: Maybe I am missing something but I wonder if this could be implemented with standard wifi, if not could some one give me an explanation as to why not, I am thinking to much interference.
Thanks

Posted at 2:22 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by justin

I think this amazing new discovery is called Radio Active Detecting And Range-ing .RADAR ! ! !

Posted at 2:24 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by tinker monkey

Perhaps a RADAR but based on communications modules available to anyone. From the article:

“They’ve even tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol, the protocol for personal area networks employed by home automation services such as ZigBee.”

Now I’m wondering how thick the walls can be; and would it eventually be possible to build a georadar with useful range (yes, a lot sexier than a metal detector).

Posted at 2:42 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by saimhe

Not really radar though is it, as that uses phase scattering, this uses intensity measurement? Still an interesting use of existing kit, I like it. Maybe its RIMDAR? (Radio intensity motion detection and ranging) :-)

Posted at 3:35 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by James

Combine with a power generating bra and women in the infratry will have more power for their equipment than men. :D

Posted at 3:54 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Kee Coyote

didn’t they do this in batman? with cell phones.

Posted at 4:37 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by scott topic

please don’t mention that part of the movie it was pretty embarassing

Posted at 4:54 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Insipid Melon

in batman they had a much more complex problem, the positions of the receivers were not known with fine granularity beyond gps/cell triangulation, where in this case it seems the locations were fairly well known.

Posted at 5:37 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by cptfalcon

@coyote,
wrong story I think. was that meant for the power producing backpack?

Posted at 6:05 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by calebkraft

Time to put up the metal wallpaper in every room of the house.

Posted at 10:28 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by Bob38

I can also figure out if a wifi signal exists or not if someone moves. Physical intrusions in a wifi path kill my pirated signal :O

Posted at 10:35 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by cde

@saimhe

The article doesn’t mention anything other than 802.15.4, which can be any of three ranges of frequencies. [1] I would assume this is 2.4GHz though, which means it may be feasible with 802.11, depending on the topology type they were using and whether or not the same signal attributes are available in the 802.11 specification.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.15.4-2006#The_physical_layer

Posted at 11:49 pm on Oct 1st, 2009 by ReKlipz