Oracle trilateration refers to an attack on apps that have filters like “only show users closer than 5 km”. In case of the vulnerable apps, this was very accurate, so the attacker could change their position from the victim (which does not require physical movement, the application has to trust your device on this, so the position can be spoofed) until the victim disappeared from the list, and end up a point that is almost exactly 5 km from the victim.
Like if it said the user is 5km away, that is still going to give a pretty big area if someone were to trilateral it because the line of the circle would have to include 4.5-5.5km away.
This does not help, since the attacker can find a point where it switches between 4 km and 5 km, and then this point (in the simplest case) is exactly 4.5 km from the victim. The paper refers to this as rounded distance trilateration.
Oracle trilateration refers to an attack on apps that have filters like “only show users closer than 5 km”. In case of the vulnerable apps, this was very accurate, so the attacker could change their position from the victim (which does not require physical movement, the application has to trust your device on this, so the position can be spoofed) until the victim disappeared from the list, and end up a point that is almost exactly 5 km from the victim.
This does not help, since the attacker can find a point where it switches between 4 km and 5 km, and then this point (in the simplest case) is exactly 4.5 km from the victim. The paper refers to this as rounded distance trilateration.