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@article{208601,
        author = {Sakshi Laxman Jadhav and Vaishnavi Surykant Kalokhe and Mrs. Guna Dhondwad},
        title = {Privacy And Security Risks of Passive Through-Wall Wi-Fi Sensing: A Survey Of CSI-Based Attacks and Defense Mechanisms},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {no},
        pages = {589-594},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=208601},
        abstract = {Wi-Fi sensing has emerged as an important technology that uses wireless signals to detect and analyze changes in the surrounding environment. Unlike conventional Wi-Fi communication, sensing techniques can extract information about human presence, movement, location, and other activities from changes in wireless signals. Recent research has raised significant privacy and security concerns because attackers may exploit these capabilities to monitor individuals without their knowledge. 
This paper presents a survey of current techniques that demonstrate the possibility of spying through walls using Wi-Fi signals, with particular focus on passive Wi-Fi sensing attacks. The survey examines techniques based on Channel State Information (CSI) and other Wi-Fi signal characteristics that allow an observer to infer presence, motion, activity, and in some settings movement direction behind physical barriers. Existing research demonstrates that wireless observations can reveal sensitive behavioral information without requiring a conventional camera or direct visual access. The paper reviews passive attack models, CSI-based sensing pipelines, through-wall sensing research, and defense approaches including channel obfuscation, privacy-preserving signal processing, active defenses, and passive system-level protections. It also identifies limitations such as environmental dependence, hardware availability, multipath effects, multiperson interference, and the gap between controlled experiments and real-world deployment. Finally, the paper discusses future directions for secure Wi-Fi sensing, including privacy-aware wireless standards, controlled CSI access, attack detection, adaptive defenses, and privacy-preserving machine learning.},
        keywords = {Wi-Fi Sensing; Through-Wall Sensing; Channel State Information (CSI); Passive Attack; Wireless Security; Privacy; Human Activity Recognition; Wi-Fi Security},
        month = {September},
        }