Your MAC Address Can Be Detected Easily when Your Smartphone Connected to the Wi-Fi

Abstract

In this short paper, we prove that the smartphones connected to the Wi-Fi can be detected (scanned) easily with the help of a Raspberry Pi. To capture the packet which is sent by smartphone for some distance, we used Tshark. According to the observation, the smartphone eventually broadcast some packets data containing MAC layers data, in which the period of broad-casting data depends on the smartphone’s state (active scanning/sleep). Besides MAC layers data, we also detect/capture other parameters, i.e., wireless signature data transmitted by smartphone (RSSI) and Time-stamp. The RSSI value measured in this test has a range from -30 dBm to -80 dBm. The result proves in the same distance; different smartphones give different RSSI values (each smartphone emits different power strength). The RSSI value has more significant changes in a short distance (in this test result, 1 to 10 meters) and less significant change in a long distance (above 20 meters). The MAC address, time-stamp, and RSSI that scanned/captured successfully through Raspberry Pi from the smartphones can be used as a reference for various purposes/applications in future work, such as Wi-Fi scanning/tracking system. © 2021, International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies. All rights reserved.