> That's because millions of home gateway routers, especially those leased to customers by their internet service providers (ISPs), leak their unique hardware ID numbers through their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses — and those hardware ID numbers can be connected to publicly available maps that show the street locations of Wi-Fi networks.
It's based on this talk apparently
> We assume a weak adversary who is remote to the target and has no privileged access. Our privacy attack lies in IPv6 addresses formed via EUI-64, which embed the interface's hardware MAC address in the IPv6 address. While EUI-64 IPv6 addresses are no longer used by most operating systems, they are commonly found in legacy and low-profit-margin customer premises equipment (CPE), e.g., commodity routers connecting residential and business subscribers. Because IPv6 CPE are routed hops (as opposed to IPv4 NATs), we can discover their MAC address via traceroute if they use EUI-64.
> These CPE are frequently all-in-one devices that also provide Wi-Fi. Crucially, the MAC address of the Wi-Fi interface is often related to the MAC address of the wide area interface, e.g., a +/-1 offset. These Wi-Fi MACs are broadcast (the 802.11 BSSID) and captured by wardriving databases that also record their physical location. By correlating the MAC addresses embedded in IPv6 home router addresses with their Wi-Fi address counterpart, we can remotely geolocate them, fusing virtual data with meatspace.
They have a tool that lets you check a given IPv6 address: https://github.com/6int/IPvSeeYou
That said, it's absolutely toxic to be telling people to just turn off IPv6. Completely makes me lose trust in the rest of the site's content.
> For years, turning off IPv6 (IP version 6) was on the long list below, but as of August 2021, I think it belongs here on the short list too. Very very few people need it and it was recently disclosed that there is a possible security issue with it.
I think you're being a bit too accusative. Every suggestion has sources to back it up if you want to see why something is recommended.
I am not sure to understand, while this is in theory doable, do these "captured by wardriving" databases exist?
And do they cover "everywhere"?
So my bet is, yeah, they do exist and they do pretty much cover everywhere.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...
Though I believe that if Google is the adversary, they have ways (only a guess, but some kind of correlation between GPS location on mobile while connected to Wi-Fi and http requests could be one) that make the "wardriving database" unneeded, I mean, there should be a constant updating of this database, or it would turn out pretty much obsolete soon.
[1]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation...
There are both open and proprietary versions.
I think early iPhones used it (with cell site data too), before they had GPS. Can’t remember their name for it.
But, all big populated areas are mapped and understood.
See Hybrid Positioning too, which is combining all available data, including Wi-Fi, to aid in rapid and accurate location information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_positioning_system