IEEE 802.11 chipset fingerprinting by the measurement of timing characteristics

Authors:
Guenther Lackner;Peter Teufl
Affiliations:
University of Technology Graz, Inffeldgasse, Graz, Austria;University of Technology Graz, Inffeldgasse, Graz, Austria
Venue:
AISC '11 Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Information Security Conference - Volume 116
Year:
2011

Citing 5
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Abstract

In this paper we present a technique to create WLAN device fingerprints by measuring timing properties without the use of special-purpose hardware. Our proposed process is absolutely passive and cannot be detected by the targeted device. The timing measurement is based on a delay caused by the hardware implementation of the CRC checksum algorithm at the network interface card (NIC) of the client. This delay turned out to be significant for a large number of different chipset implementations. The ability of identifying connected devices could improve the security of a wireless network significantly. It could help to enhance access control mechanisms and would deliver valuable real time information about the connected clients. As a proof of our concept we present a prototype implementation called WiFinger to evaluate our approach.