[Cryptography] Business opportunities in crypto

Henry Baker hbaker1 at pipeline.com
Tue Apr 13 14:11:46 EDT 2021


Re: Privacy-preserving wifi/BT/wireless handshakes

I need to do a better job of explaining this one.

Suppose you have 2 devices that you want to connect so
that they can talk to one another.

If you connect them via a cable, and the cable is
reasonably well-shielded, then no one can listen in
to the conversation between the two devices.

So now I want to connect two devices using a wireless
connection -- e.g., wifi/Bluetooth/BLE/whatever. If
I have complete control of both 'ends' and can set
them up properly, then there should be a wireless
protocol that reveals NOTHING about their connecting
with each other, other than they are both transmitting
from time to time on wireless channels.

Right now, one of them has to publicly advertise its
SSID & MAC, which should not be necessary for a point-
to-point wireless connection.

If a point2point connection can be made, then it should
also be possible to create a multipoint connection which
is completely private -- e.g., a private home network.

At 08:53 AM 4/13/2021, Henry Baker wrote:
>4. Privacy-preserving wifi/BT/wireless handshakes. While
>a small amount of progress was made several years ago
>on random MAC addresses during scanning, the 'real',
>'(semi-) fixed' MAC address is still used. Isn't there
>some sort of zero knowledge challenge/response protocol
>that could be used instead -- e.g., your MAC address
>becomes a sort of private PKE key which you can prove
>you have, but the wifi hotspot never actually learns
>the bits of your now-private MAC address.



More information about the cryptography mailing list