iPhone 7 lets your neighbors know if you are home or out

Re:iPhone 7 lets your neighbors know if you are home or out by anishathalye on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @12:14AM (#13983340)

This is known behavior: according to the iOS 10 Security white paper [1], "iOS uses randomized Media Access Control (MAC) address when conducting Wi-Fi scans while it isn't associated with a Wi-Fi network... Note that Wi-Fi scans which happen while trying to connect to a preferred Wi-Fi Network aren't randomized".

I haven't put much thought into it, but I wonder why they don't randomize all probe requests...

[1]: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

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Re:iPhone 7 lets your neighbors know if you are home or out by agf on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @12:17AM (#13983351)

I would assume because MAC-based whitelisting is a commonly used WiFi access control mechanism?

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Re:iPhone 7 lets your neighbors know if you are home or out by eridius on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @12:22AM (#13983379)

Also possibly because, if it is associated with a wifi network, then it's already sending packets with its MAC address, so there's not much point in randomizing some of the packets.

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Re:iPhone 7 lets your neighbors know if you are home or out by developer2 on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @12:51AM (#13983512)

In addition to those who whitelist based on MAC address, some networks also assign "static IPs" via DHCP based on the MAC address.

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