Timestamps Unchained: Toward Secure Distance-Bounding on Commodity Wi-Fi Hardware

ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), pp. 280–291

Abstract

Distance-bounding protocols provide strong security guarantees, yet their secure realization depends on high-precision physical-layer timestamping of signal transmission and reception. In principle, modern commodity IEEE 802.11 chipsets fulfill these technical requirements. However, distance-bounding research and experimentation on Wi-Fi remain severely limited, as the required high-precision timestamping functionality on 802.11 hardware is tightly coupled to fixed protocol exchanges (e.g., FTM) implemented in closed-source firmware. This restricts the freedom of open research.

Authors 5

1. Maximilian von Tschirschnitz

   Technical University of Munich

   Affiliation as printed

   Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

2. Daniel von Kirschten

   Technical University of Munich

   Affiliation as printed

   Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

3. Viktor Boskovski

   Technical University of Munich

   Affiliation as printed

   Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

4. Simon Neuenhausen Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

5. Jens Großklags

   Technical University of Munich

   Affiliation as printed

   Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany