Privacy Cocktails

 On last friday again the „Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften“ impressed many Dresdner and young future researchers. Our chair participated with the goal of providing the visitors an understanding of the significance and topicality of privacy and security.

Stefan Köpsell demonstrated in two live hacking slots how easy attacks on computer systems can be realised. He hijacked insufficient secured computers, intercepted unencrypted connections and spied on telephone conversations in a vivid and humorous manner. Besides the topics of USB security, phishing or ransomware, also countermeasures were discussed.

Alexander Senier and Martin Beck illustrated how easy and cheap movement profiles of smartphones can be created and analyzed. For less then 500€ and a little bit of handicraft, 50 wifi tracker (privacy cocktails) could be prepared and distributed on the campus. With these trackers, they could trace the probe requests of smartphones of the visitors. With the help of such requests, smartphones try to detect current available wlan networks. These requests contain the individual mac adress of the client, which allow unique identification. From 18:00 up to 21:00, they traced the movements of the visitors all over the campus. The subsequent presentation showed exemplary how easy such tracing works and discussed countermeasures.

With nearly 200 guests, both events were well-frequented and showed high interest in the audience.