Devices that use Wi-Fi can be tricked into draining their own batteries, thanks to a quirk in the way that wireless networks operate. Security experts say that although the ability seems innocuous at first glance, it could be exploited to take out security cameras, or form part of a coordinated attack with other vulnerabilities.
Ali Abedi at Stanford University in California and his colleagues have discovered a phenomenon that they call “polite Wi-Fi”, in which devices acknowledge and reply to messages from …