this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
68 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
84938 readers
3757 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean it sounds pretty rough... and it would seem to me the real problem is they are making it sound like the problem is the existing routers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it basically saying... someone could drop in a battery powered wifi router in your front yard and spy through your walls?
To an extent. it's better to have it inside with you and lots of other devices around to get a good picture from the BFI.
AS bad as it sounds, you'r probably sitting next to, or carrying with you a cellphone with a unique IMEI that ties you to credit cards and social security numbers, it has an exact GPS lock available to police for the asking, and even if you turn that off, a yagi or any antenna locator could id you far better than the BFI.
They could do the same thing with a speaker playing a sound. It's basically sonar, but the waves being measured are RF and not sound. But it being outside your home wouldn't work that well; wifi does not penetrate wood or plaster walls very well, and won't get through brick or metal at all. They can shape it, to go around things, but unless it's extremely high powered, it won't go through anything solid.
Similarly for a whole bunch of attack vectors. Reconstructing keystrokes from keyboard sounds has been demonstrated. But you need a quiet background and a close microphone. At which point you probably could have just plugged in an inconspicuous keylogger and be done with it.