[AusNOG] Estimate of what Google StreetView may have captured

[phil colbourn]

I was interested enough (and with time due to ill health) to see if I could
make an estimate of what Google may have captured.

Here are my assumptions:

1. From the ABS December 2009, 5.2M ADSL and Cable subscribers.
http://abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8153.0/
2. 114,400 TB downloaded data per year (ABS)
3. Uploaded data is 10% of downloaded data.
4. All subscribers use unencrypted WiFi.
5. WiFi range is +-250m
6. Sample 5 channels per second (I read this somewhere)
7. Data in overlapping channels can be received in channels 1, 6, 11
8. StreetView car travels at 40km/h between 8:00 and 16:00.
9. Uploaded data is sent evenly throughout the day from domestic homes and
that between 8:00 and 16:00 the upload data rates are average.
10. Households send 5 non-HTTPS passwords per day.

So basically I assume the street car samples 3 channels at the rate of 5 per
second.
I calculate the time the car is in range of a WiFi base as 45s and can
sample 15s worth of data.

This means that they can record about 1400 Bytes of data per SSID.

The probability of capturing a password is about 0.1% so about 6000
passwords would be captured.

If, however, 50% of WiFi is encrypted then the above numbers are halved to
700B and 3000 passwords.

Based on my assumptions I think the values will be much lower.

1. During the day is not the peak time for downloads from households.
2. Encrypted WiFi is on the increase and seems to be higher than 50%. Maybe
80%.
3. Few services use unencrypted passwords - I can not think of any except
for POP based email.
4. WiFi range is probably not +-250m and the ability to pickup a
transmission from a laptop/mobile at these distances is low.
5. Uploaded data is probably less that 10% of Downloaded data.

Does anyone have better assumptions?



-- 
Phil

http://philatwarrimoo.blogspot.com
http://code.google.com/p/snmp2xml

"Someone has solved it and uploaded it for free."

"If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to look."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke - Who does magic today?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20100619/dca504cd/attachment.html>