Cut Off Glassholes’ Wi-Fi With This Google Glass Detector
By Andy Greenberg
Not a fan of Google Glass’s ability to turn ordinary humans into
invisibly recording surveillance cyborgs? Now you can create your own
“glasshole-free zone.”
Berlin artist Julian Oliver has written a simple program called
Glasshole.sh that detects any Glass device attempting to connect to a
Wi-Fi network based on a unique character string that he says he’s found
in the MAC addresses of Google’s augmented reality headsets. Install
Oliver’s program on a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone mini-computer and plug
it into a USB network antenna, and the gadget becomes a Google Glass
detector, sniffing the local network for signs of Glass users. When it
detects Glass, it uses the program Aircrack-NG to impersonate the
network and send a “deauthorization” command, cutting the headset’s
Wi-Fi connection. It can also emit a beep to signal the Glass-wearer’s
presence to anyone nearby.
“To say ‘I don’t want to be filmed’ at a restaurant, at a party, or
playing with your kids is perfectly OK. But how do you do that when you
don’t even know if a device is recording?” Oliver tells WIRED. “This
steps up the game. It’s taking a jammer-like approach.”
Oliver came up with the program after hearing that a fellow artist
friend was disturbed by guests who showed up to his art exhibit wearing
Glass. The device, after all, offered no way for the artist to know if
the Glass-wearing visitors were photographing, recording, or even
live-streaming his work.
Oliver’s program is still a mostly-unproven demonstration, though the
40-year-old New Zealand native has successfully tested it by booting
Glass off his own studio’s network. More importantly, it shows how the
uneasiness with Glass’ social implications could play out as the device
hits the mainstream. Bars in San Francisco and Seattle have already
banned Glass-wearers. In January, a Glass-headed movie-goer was
suspected of piracy and questioned by Homeland Security agents after
wearing the device in a theater. And the inventor of a Glass-like
augmented reality setup claimed to have been violently thrown out of a
Paris McDonald’s in 2012 based on the restaurant’s no-recording policy.
A program like Glasshole.sh could make those sorts of no-Glass policies
more technically enforceable, though it may have to be adapted as Glass
MAC addresses shift in future versions. And Oliver argues that a
Glass-booting device is legal so long as the Glasshole.sh user is the
owner of the network. He sees it as no different from cell phone
jammers, which have been adopted in many schools, libraries, and
government buildings.
more…
http://www.wired.com/2014/06/find-and-ban-glassholes-with-this-artists-google-glass-detector/
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