Search

Noisy Networks, Nosy Neighbors: Simple Privacy Attacks Against Residential Wireless Traffic

Contribution type: article

Title: Noisy Networks, Nosy Neighbors: Simple Privacy Attacks Against Residential Wireless Traffic

Authors:

Arne Roszeitis, ScaDS.AI, Leipzig University, Germany
Bartosz Burgiel, DigiFors GmbH, Germany
Victor Jüttner, ScaDS.AI, Leipzig University, Germany
Erik Buchmann, ScaDS.AI, Leipzig University, Germany

Keywords: Smart Home, Privacy, Traffic Analysis, HAR

Abstract:

Smart devices, such as light bulbs, TVs, fridges, etc., equipped with computing capabilities and wireless communication, are part of everyday life in many households. Previous work has already shown that a passive eavesdropper can derive private information, household routines, etc., from the network traffic of smart devices. However, existing attacks rely on capable adversaries with specialized machine learning expertise, labeled training data and reference devices, leaving it unclear how vulnerable ordinary households are to less sophisticated attackers. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which a “casual attacker” with straightforward IT skills and no specialized cybersecurity or ML tooling can reproduce such privacy attacks. Operating from an adjacent room in a real- world apartment building, we constrain our adversary to use only three off-the-shelf Raspberry Pis, Wireshark, and basic Python scripts. Through a three-week study, we demonstrate that this casual attacker can manually identify devices, recognize user states, track smartphone movements through walls via RSSI triangulation, and successfully extract detailed daily routines, including sleep patterns of guests. Our findings show that smart- home privacy leakage is a threat even from low-resourced, straightforward adversaries, e.g., neighbors.

Publication Date: June 7, 2026

Presented during:

Dates: June 7, 2026 to June 11, 2026

Location: Porto, Portugal

Venue:

Hotel Novotel Porto Gaia

Rua Martir Sao Sebastiao, Afurada,
4400-499 Vila Nova de Gaia

Hotel website

Copyright (c) DTR Society, 2026

Contact Us

Proposals

The submission system is currently being prepared. We invite you to subscribe to the newsletter so you will be the first to know when it goes online.