We live in a connected world where social media is ubiquitous and many people feel compelled to share every waking moment with anyone who will listen. In this type of world, wearable computers like Google Glass allow us to share experiences like never before. A Glass user can take photos, record video and audio, or potentially even stream video live on the Internet with the greatest of ease. That might be great for the Glass user, but what about the rest of us? As wearable computing becomes more and more mainstream, people are naturally going to become divided on the issue of privacy. Is it a good thing to have “cyborgs” with wearable computers and cameras constantly at the ready, or is it a privacy nightmare? The cyborg war is coming, and [Julian] has already chosen his side.
It would seem that [Julian] lands on the side of the privacy advocates, based on his “glasshole” script. Glasshole is a relatively simple bash script that relies on some other common network security tools to take care of the heavy lifting. The basic premise relies on the fact that every manufacturer of network interface devices is assigned their own MAC prefix. This is a piece of the MAC address that is unique to that manufacturer.
[Julian’s] script uses a utility called arp-scan to obtain a list of all MAC addresses on a given wireless network. It then loops through each address and compares it to the known Google Glass MAC prefix. If it finds a match, it will make an audible beeping noise to alert the script user. The script then launches aireplay-ng in de-authentication mode. This will send spoofed disassociate packets to the client (in this case the Google Glass device), hopefully forcing them to disconnect from the access point. The script runs continuously, ensuring that once the device reconnects to the network it will get booted off once again. The script is designed to be run on a small Linux computer such as a Raspberry Pi or a BeagleBone black. This way, the user can carry it around with them as a sort of portable defense mechanism.
How do you fit into the cyborg war? Will you stand proudly with your computer on your face for all to see? If so, what kind of countermeasures would you deploy to prevent this type of attack from working on you? If not, what other types of interesting attacks can you think of to keep the cyborgs at bay?
[Thanks Syed]
The level of stupidity displayed in this thread has to be the worst I have ever seen on here.
I’m out.
1st comment here, after reading most of the comments on this article, some of the commenter’s should return to there basement or better yet find a cave and some tin foil…
i always come to hack-a-day to read on great solutions to problems, technological feats, fun stuff, and then i read this…
The way I see it, If you don’t want to be photographed , videoed ect ect do not leave your house. Guess what as soon as you walk out of your door and in full view of the sky. Whoopsie you are being surveilled by many satellites. Google earth , Bing ect ect.
Walk in front of a bank or ATM GOTCHA! at many street intersections there are cameras.
The list is endless. You can never know that little cam on you phone or laptop can be hacked and watching you 24/7.
So I really don’t give a flying F, take a picture , make a vid you can kiss my Lilly white fat pimple pot marked but.
Exactly. Id be far more scared of living in a world were I wasnt allowed to film/take photos in public.
(of course, harassing or following specific people is a different matter – but if your in the background of my pic? so what!)
You watch too many movies. Did you get your degree from Star Trek University, too?
Satellites are stretching it too far (if we consider conventional IMINT); for blanket surveillance the resolution is too small, when it is dialed up the covered area is in turn too small.
Drones, now, that’s an entirely different barrel of worms. Cheap, plentiful, increasingly used, and there are some under development that can watch over large areas (think a city) and trace individual people’s movements. See the “ARGUS-IS” camera:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
Thought. Fight surveillance with fashion. Use surgeon-style face masks like Japanese do during flu seasons, wear hats (large-diameter, generic kind, as many people with the same hat style as possible so the software cannot recognize well and is liable to get confused who is who) against eyes from above.
If you hate Glass you are going to have an aneurysm when you read up on Project Tango https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/
The term glasshole always speaks a lot louder to the group using it, then the (almost totaly hypothetical and in vastly smaller numbers) Glass users actually being rude or inconsiderate.
Also, blocking Wi-Fi does not in any way block a camera, which is the privacy objection.
Glass does not constantly stream – nor could it, your batterys would be dead in no time.
I don’t understand the hatred towards Glass, especially in a tech savvy community like this. Anything Glass can do, a cell phone can do. Anything Glass can do sneakily, a cell phone can do more sneakily. If someone wants to surreptitiously record or photograph you, they’re going to, and they’re not going to use Glass to do it.
That said, I think Glass as a concept is one of the coolest things to start working its way towards main stream acceptance in years. This was the sci-fi of our childhoods. I already use a HUD in my motorcycle helmet, and (even ignoring every other feature) in less than a year it’s already saved me from being held at fault in an accident (through the dash cam component). Everyone is so focused on one (completely stupid) potential use of the device that they fail to even consider the possibilities for the future.
Also, since I didn’t actually address the post itself yet: you’re a complete asshole to use this, and in several parts of the world, a criminal. Who walks around DoSing strangers? Idiocy.
Not to mention that the technology for something like Google Glass has been around for at least two decades; visit http://microship.com/bike/index.html and take a good look at the helmet the guy is wearing in the big photo. The only real difference between then and now is the size of the computer attached to the display; Steve has at least three different ones that he can switch between tucked away in various parts of the bike and trailer.
I’m okay with people irrationally bitching about their lack of privacy
in public, something they haven’t had for years but the cameras haven’t been strapped to peoples faces so they didn’t notice, but fuck off with your anti-cyborg bullshit.
There’s nothing more pathetic than pulling some shit out your ass that people are somewhat afraid of and using it to manipulate how people feel without even fucking considering that you are creating the next generation of bigots.
If you want total privacy you should have fucking said something about smartphones, camera phones, or security cameras. But no-one did, and you expect me to take you seriously now? Why?
WOW – I am seriously disturbed and concerned. When did the luddites take up programming and where did all these cranky old men come from ?
The glasshole script can be easily countered with other scripts that will overload the offending interference which, since it is small and hidden, as a cowardly device would be, can be overheated and damaged by such. And if it is Ok for you to disrupt networks you do not own, then it is Ok for me to fry your little weasel device.
MAC filter the Wifi you OWN – no argument. Leave a sign in your shop window, “Please remove Goggle Glass before entering” – also fine and no argument here. Lose customers – your right. Be paranoid about your picture – don’t want to be photo’d ? _ stay home and close the drapes; – all just fine.
Just please, PLEASE stop all the whining about evil devices and technology stealing the souls of man! Don’t drive a car, don’t have a cell phone, don’t use Google glass, live in 1492: but let the rest of us enjoy the current tech.
Than you. Y’all can go back to whining now
“Be paranoid about your picture – don’t want to be photo’d ? _ stay home and close the drapes; – all just fine.”
Right, because THAT’S a reasonable response…. I’ll just stay indoors because how dare we interfere with YOUR right to invade my privacy.
I guess when you are an asshole, you just don’t really understand why people call you one.
You people vote, don’t you? That’s far more scary than google glass.
The first-offense penalty for running aireplay-ng in anything other than transparent data-gathering modes on a network that you don’t have the explicit permission from the network owner to do so and with the full knowledge of the users of that network should be having a heavy iron bar applied to your wrists at high speed. For the second offense, said bar should be applied to the back of your head. There will be no third offense.
If you own the network in question, you can keep unwanted devices out by some combination of WPA and putting MAC filtering rules on the L2 switch.
Sometimes you don’t have much other choice. I saw a case when this attack was used to force an accesspoint operator (who “wisely” picked a frequency that was sitting between existing networks and interfering with both) to change the channel. (Or, “jam the network X until it moves out of frequency Y”.) Sad as it is, sometimes the players are noncooperative and the best you can do is some forcing.
What about openMV ?? http://wp.me/pk3lN-weh
This is what you people googleglass haters should be affraid of….
bunch of hypocrytes..
Allow me to clarify… I have no problem with google glass. Actually I think it is a cool tech.
What I *do* have a problem with is things like auto-tagging names, pulling up personal info, etc… If you could be standing in a park, point your google glass at me and then learn my home address, for example… I would be pissed.
If you could point your camera at me and decide you want to show the world what I am doing, upload a video and then tag my facebook name to it. I would be pissed.
If you filmed me shopping in a store, and suddenly I started getting a ton of emails, phone calls, and mail trying to sell me stuff because some glasshole filmed me walking into Jack’s Gator Shop, I am going to be pissed.
It’s different if you thought I looked like an idiot and filmed me to show your friends. Yeah, I might be pissed if I were to find out, but it’s a whole other thing to have my name and personal details attached to it. That’s where anonymity ends and the infringement begins.
And you could argue that the user would have to do that, but the average user of any technology is an idiot that would have no idea how to configure their settings to make sure they didn’t. And google is too much of an asshole company to trust not to automatically default settings like this.
So, the problem isn’t so much being filmed for your own personal amusement. Honestly, if you think I am that interesting (which I am not), then your life sucks worse than mine. It’s the non-anonymous part of it that I will have a problem with.
If you took a picture in a park, and I happened to be one of the 100 people in your picture, most people don’t care. But this is like having a caption with all 100 people’s names and personal information listed. No, I am not ok with that.
But again, as can be seen in this thread, you glassholes won’t understand this. Because YOU are the ones behind the camera, not in front of it.
There is a reason you are called glassholes.
You do understand that none of these things are possible right now, right? All these things would require a service that ignores all privacy restrictions and tags people regardless of any previous relationship to the person posting the photo – and neither Google nor Facebook permit this.
Further, it’s currently technically infeasible – not only is indexing faces a tough problem, but enough faces look similar that if a computer had 100 million faces to choose from instead of the 100 faces of your friends, it would have an astronomical false positive rate.
I do understand that, yes. But honestly, after reading the discussions in this thread, glassholes truly ARE assholes because they don’t give a shit about any of that.
I actually walked into this thread originally without much of an opinion. But now I am convinced that these people need to be restricted from that possibility.
BTW, while Google and Facebook may not “permit” this, they do not restrict it by default. I can go to a party and tag anyone I want in a photo I took whether they are a friend or not. In fact they ARE working on technology to recognize faces and auto-tag in pictures. I’m sure there will be some opt-out 100 pages down in the settings.
Both facebook and google make a living off generating marketing information from their users (nothing is free.) Trust me, they will find a way to do this.
Google already supports recognising faces _of your friends_ and tagging them. But again, for both technical and privacy reasons, it will only do so for people who you already know.
It is certainly currently technically feasable. Facebooks alone has a massive service that does nothing but facial recognition and identification, with many developers on it. Even years ago on local computer without much computing power, iphoto on mac has had all the capability and it’s touted as a feature. Thankfully in that case it was all local, but I’m sure in recent years it’s spilled onto their icloud service.
And you are wrong; facebook and google don’t forbid either of these uses. Once more, I have zero trust of anything these for profit corporations say; they are out to make money by marketing and advertising, and will always do whatever they can to further those goals without any consideration of ethics, morals, privacy, rights, etc. You can be sure that’s all buried in a 1000 page agreement that no-one but a large team of layers could ever decipher.
No, it’s not. Recognising which of 100 faces something is is a far, far easier task than recognising which of 100,000,000 faces something is. As a result, the rate of false positives will be astronomical.
Neither Google nor Facebook, given a photo, will automatically tag a face of someone who isn’t linked to you in some fashion.
Remember that whole ‘Do-not-track’ opt-out cookie that got tried? All those advertising and marketing corps who said loudly “of course we’ll honor that!”. Yeah… No one honors that setting, not even bigger corps like doubleclick. You cannot believe a word that markets and advertisers say.
^^^ This so much.
The first thing the logo\sign made me think of was the show, “Real Humans”
Easy solution:
Rout my glass through my phone’s connection to the wi-fi network, like it ALWAYS WILL BE ANYWAYS.
“Hai guyz! I iz creating a tool to kick all 0 of dem ebil glass users who are connecting directly to a wi-fi network off of that network.”