Let's shake on it: Extracting secure shared keys from Wi-Fi CSI

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to generate secure shared keys from Wi-Fi CSI by inducing diversity through shaking, enabling secure key exchange resistant to eavesdropping in indoor environments.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new technique utilizing device shaking to enhance CSI-based key generation, improving security and practicality for Wi-Fi communications.

Findings

CSI-based keys have a low bit mismatch rate of 5-15% between legitimate users.

Eavesdroppers observe about 50% bit mismatch even within 10cm.

Secure 128-bit keys can be generated in 20 seconds with device shaking.

Abstract

A shared secret key is necessary for encrypted communications. Since Wi-Fi relies on OFDM, we suggest a method to generate such a key by utilizing Wi-Fi's channel state information (CSI). CSI is typically reciprocal but very sensitive to location: While the legitimate Alice and Bob observe the same CSI, an eavesdropper Eve observes an uncorrelated CSI when positioned over 0.5 wavelength away. We show that if endpoint Bob is shaken, sufficient diversity is induced in the CSI so that it can serve as a source of true randomness. Then we show that the CSI among neighboring sub-carriers is correlated, so we select a small set of judiciously-spaced sub-carriers, and use a majority rule around each. We demonstrate that Alice and Bob observe a 5-15\% bit mismatch rate (BMR) in the extracted bitstream while Eve observes a BMR of around 50\% even when placed within 10cm of Alice. We employ the cryptography-oriented definition of min-entropy to estimate the number of secure bits within the bitstream, and use the Cascade algorithm of quantum-key-distribution to reconcile Alice and Bob's bitstreams, while quantifying the number of bits leaked by the algorithm. Accounting for both the min-entropy and the cascade leakage we quantify the Secured Bit Generation Rate of our method. We conducted extensive tests in an indoor environment. Our system exhibits a secure bit generation rate of 1.2--1.6 %secure bits per packet, at distances ranging from 0.5m--9m, and can generate a secure shared 128-bit key with 20sec of device shaking.