I too would like to know how to make a hog finder
Edit: Okay I think I figured it out. Using an app called BLE Radar (F-Droid Link and Google Play link) you can scan nearby Bluetooth devices passively. You can use the app to setup filters to send notifications when specific devices or addresses are nearby.
Yup, that's it. BLE Radar is the best app I've found so far. Someone go make a PR for playing a sound when a profile matches though...
Tasers, bodycams and holsters among other things made by Taser are constantly spamming advertising packets over BLE in order to be able to link to each other quickly (ie if a taser or gun is drawn, turn on the body cam). These devices are almost all made by one company and per the Bluetooth specification, the manufacturer ID is the first three bytes of the device ID, 00:25:DF: the address for Axon International Torture Devices.
Credit to Nullagent/rfparty for discovering the vulnerability. https://www.engadget.com/how-hackers-are-using-bluetooth-to-track-police-activity-140012717.html
A couple notes in practice: without dedicated hardware BLE advertising packets are very random, your phone can only sense one of the three advertising channels at once and it rotates though them. Additionally local band conditions (how many innocuous BLE devices are also around, WiFi, unrelated ISM stuff, other factors) can change sensitivity. BLE is a chaotic spammy protocol that likes to shout over itself. As a result, detections can happen the instant someone gets within ~100m of you, or they may not be detected for several seconds. Some departments may not even use Axon hardware at all, though the majority seem to. You may be able to use the WiGLE database to get a sense for your locale, but I haven't dug into that yet.
Further research: This has a lot of potential for protest/protected first amendment activities. As stated, the ability to cue an audio alert. Apps that can trigger audio/video recording when cops are very close (high RSSI). Apps that can alert a friend that lots of cops are very close and the user is unable to halt a countdown. Apps that can wipe/lock/turn off a phone if lots of cops are very close or around for an extended period of time (in custody).
One thing I'm curious about is of using a micro controller with a much larger receiver would extend BLE sniffing capabilities.
Or setting up some LoRa equipped micro controllers to do sniffing in an area and syncing that data using a LoRa mesh to an active database of some kind. (Like utilize something similar to (or in fact) Meshtastic)
just installed it and Sweet Lord the Animations
I just clicked on the scan button and
VWOORP
This is cyberpunk as hell, and awesome.
Unfortunately apple does not expose mac addresses to apps, so iPhone users can’t do it :(
Is there anything iphones can do besides scroll social media? Every time I hear about some cool new capability of phones this caveat is always present.
Falsely identify some meme in your gallery as CSAM and send you to feds
(partially /s)
Complain about how blurry their 60 second video came through and blame it on android. I constantly explain how iMessage isn't texting, but there are plenty of ways to get the same abilities.
You can use NRF Connect to scan for BLE beacons: https://apps.apple.com/fi/app/nrf-connect-for-mobile/id1054362403
And rightfully so. Corporations will find every conceivable way to track you and no API will be left unused, including tracking MAC addresses of bluetooth devices around you, which is a relatively easy one.
However, you can absolutely allow an app to access that API so it can scan for those MACs.
Funny thing, as soon as the API is locked down and presented as an option to the user, companies stop using it since nobody wants to give bluetooth access to i.e. Facebook.
No passive scanning in the background though
Neat. 00:35:df is assigned to Taser. They make LEO accessories.
That's how it works. TASER became Axom (maker of most body cams).
00:25 not 35
Wait could I theoretically go to a UK police station or somewhere with a lot of police and pick up their MAC addresses.
Then if I were to be involved in some direct action I could get alerts that the police are nearby?
If so what device do I need to do this mobile? Like a laptop? Or one of those little orange hacker tools which the name is escapes me right now.
Interesting idea, but aren't most MAC addresses randomised per connection nowadays?
Yeah I should have known that I guess as iPhones have that setting.
How does one enable the feral hog radar?
This is why I'm on Lemmy
@ackshewally There's also D4:2D:C5 for i-PRO & a bunch for Motorola Solutions Inc. (different child company from Motorola, seems to make police hardware). Does anyone know any more OUIs? There are a few other Bluetooth police hardware manufacturers I've found that don't seem to have OUIs.
Also, does using an asterisk like that work? I've been using a regex for it & I would like to turn it into that to make it more readable.
I wish there was something better than BLE Radar for this that could search for things other than just MAC addresses & preset manufacturers.
Unfortunately, this requires your local police department to have the latest axon gear… I’ve actively sat down and listened for signals near my local police and didn’t spot any advertising beacons
advertising bacons
What's the range on this thing?
From a quick search the BLE specification says it can be greater than 1km. But it has to be a Device that supports the newest Long Range Modes.
Older devices it can be about 100m.
In practice it's usually at or more commonly under 100m. Since we're at the mercy of what Axon has graciously provided for us, were unlikely to get BLE long range (coded PHY) type packets out of these devices, they probably have no use case for supporting the extension.
interesting.
i wrote some scripts that runs airodump ng, then clean the csv, send all beacons with timestamp to a database. this helped me to collect mac adresses for some time now and allows me to have alerts if neighbours are back from vacation (e.g. using home assistant i get notifications ob androidTV)
i did not go for bluetooth because espresence for homeassistant does that out of the box. https://espresense.com/
Curious as to why you want to know when your neighbours are back? Or actually the benefit of collecting MAC addresses in general.
i stumbled across this project but it wasnt quite working for me since the author uses it in a very remote location with few to zero clients: https://github.com/AgustinPelaez/wifi-presence-detector
This is so hot
Really cool! I didn't know about this yet
this is why we need ar-15s, for the 30 to 50 feral hog Bluetooth notifications
