Demo: Stuffing Wi-Fi Beacons for Fun and Profit.

Ubiquitous Wi-Fi access points (APs) constantly send out beacon and probe response frames to inform potential stations (STAs) about their existence. Beacon and probe responses can be extended by adding additional information (so-called beacon stuffing) making it possible to deliver this information to mobile devices (e.g. smart-phones equipped with 802.11 interfaces) without the need for association with the local infrastructure. This feature can be used to support location-based information services (LBS) related for e.g. advertising local opportunities, temporary obstacles and traffic disturbances or emergency notifications. In this paper we introduce a demonstrator for Location-based Wi-Fi Services (LoWS) based on beacon stuffing. The LoWS system can be easily installed within an existent 802.11 infrastructure while the receiver application can be installed on nearly all up-to-date commercial off-the-shelf smartphones, e.g. based on Android or iOS.