Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-24 Thread Glen Turner
Jonathan Lange wrote: Recent events have reminded us that randomness is just as important in SSH key generation. I'd save my dice (and my time) for things that actually guard my data. The entire strength of WPA2-PSK depends on the shared key being unguessable; that is, random. So the WPA2-PSK

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-24 Thread Adrian Chadd
On Tue, Jun 24, 2008, Daniel Morrison wrote: > I have never understood that whole "don't broadcast your ESSID" thing. > > Security by obscurity, surely? I had one place in dim memory that implemented that specifically so arbitrary devices wouldn't associate-by-passing and tie up valuable slots o

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-24 Thread Daniel Morrison
Glen Turner wrote: You really can go too far, and wireless security is a prime example of pointless defence in depth. All that not using a ESSID broadcast, no DHCP, MAC address filtering do is the raise the time and hassle it takes to get on the network. Which means that there is (or soon will

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread Craig Dibble
Quoting Jonathan Lange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: More broadly, generating your wireless key with a cryptographically secure RNG seems to me to be overkill for most people. Buying specialty dice for it seems plain silly.[1] Flipping a coin eight times doesn't take much longer than rolling 4d4, 2d16 or

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread Rick Welykochy
Jonathan Lange wrote: Recent events have reminded us that randomness is just as important in SSH key generation. I'd save my dice (and my time) for things that actually guard my data. An old favourite is to pick a song you know well and grab the first letters of a line or two in the song. Appl

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread Jonathan Lange
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 8:47 PM, Glen Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jonathan Lange wrote: >> >> Of course, the more interesting question is WHY!?!?! > > Apologies, I had thought it was obvious. > You've missed the spirit of my question, I think. I looked only at Kenneth's post and saw someth

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread david . lyon
Quoting Cibby Pulikkaseril <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: I'd just like to add an anecdote on pseudo-random number generation: several years ago, a group of Canadian comp. sci. students were arrested for fraud. . ... Good story.. I can't seem to find a link to this story, though. Is it bogus

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread Cibby Pulikkaseril
ough. Is it bogus? Cibby 20/20 Filmsight http://moviecritic.com.au --- On Mon, 6/23/08, Rick Welykochy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Rick Welykochy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless? > To: "Glen Turner" <

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread Rick Welykochy
Glen Turner wrote: They avoid number at the extremes and avoid repeated digits (a 60 byte string would have a run of 6 repeated digits about one time in five). The result is very non-random. Yes indeed. I've read about complaints from consumers about seemingly non-random behaviour in the shuff

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-23 Thread Glen Turner
Jonathan Lange wrote: Of course, the more interesting question is WHY!?!?! Apologies, I had thought it was obvious. Keys are often given in a hexadecimal representation. Each 4 bits is a hex digit, written using 0...9A...F. So a d16 will generate a hex digit of randomness. Two d16s will gener

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-22 Thread Jonathan Lange
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Kenneth Caldwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Surely a fair die could have only 4, 6, 8, 12 or 20 faces. > I guess one solution would be to throw three dice consisting of two > octahedrons and a tetrahedron and multiply the results. Is there a more > elegant solutio

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-22 Thread Kenneth Caldwell
On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 12:19 +0930, Glen Turner wrote: >If you find youself being dragged along by the Dungeons and Dragons >crowd to the shops one day, then grab a pair of 16-sided dice. Each >throw will give one byte of randomness for keys.] Should that closing bracket have been a smi

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-22 Thread Glen Turner
You really can go too far, and wireless security is a prime example of pointless defence in depth. All that not using a ESSID broadcast, no DHCP, MAC address filtering do is the raise the time and hassle it takes to get on the network. Which means that there is (or soon will be) a script somewhe

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-18 Thread david . lyon
Looks like it is going to be a boring day on slug from now on cos this one was really great... does kindof makes you think about all sorts of bizzarre possibilities... I've been working with regexes and search and replace... mixing that in with the http streaming (changing words in web pag

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-18 Thread Rick Welykochy
Tony Sceats wrote: why not have a little fun instead of locking everything down immediately :) http://ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html and anyway, setting up a proxy server, forcing them through it and logging all requests may give you an insight into what they are doing on your n

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-18 Thread Tony Sceats
why not have a little fun instead of locking everything down immediately :) http://ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html and anyway, setting up a proxy server, forcing them through it and logging all requests may give you an insight into what they are doing on your network, and maybe who th

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-17 Thread Sonia Hamilton
Rick Welykochy wrote: A new icon I have never seen before for a PC connection to my wireless LAN has alerted me that someone the area is attempting to connect. The icon only indicates that it is a PC. No IP or any info like that. What I am after is intrusion detection software for a wireless LAN

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Rick Welykochy
Martin Visser wrote: It isn't clear what you are seeing. Is this just an *available* adhoc network appearing in network-manager? This just means that there is someone nearby advertising their PC as an ad-hoc network. It is then up to you to decide if you want to connect to them. I strongly s

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread David P
Rick Welykochy wrote: >> firstly. >> use MAC filtering > > Yup. I have an ACL for MAC addrs. Can that be cracked? i.e. keep > trying the *huge* MAC address space until they get in? Must take > until the heat death of the universe to do that. If an attacker has successfully associated with your acc

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Martin Visser
Rick, It isn't clear what you are seeing. Is this just an *available* adhoc network appearing in network-manager? This just means that there is someone nearby advertising their PC as an ad-hoc network. It is then up to you to decide if you want to connect to them. Martin On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Martin Visser
Daniel beat me to the punch on all counts, and have to agree. Locking down MAC addresses and not using DHCP are probably the most easily circumventing - the former can be done by just configuring you NIC with that MAC address, and overriding a fixed IP address is basically as trival as responding

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Daniel Pittman
DaZZa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Rick Welykochy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> You should make sure you take the simple steps which *everyone* >>> running wireless should do. >>> >>> 1) Disable SSID broadcast >>> 2) Disable DHCP unless you absolutely *have* to us

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread DaZZa
On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Rick Welykochy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> You should make sure you take the simple steps which *everyone* >> running wireless should do. >> >> 1) Disable SSID broadcast >> 2) Disable DHCP unless you absolutely *have* to use it. > > Already do the above two. SSID

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Rick Welykochy
Dean Hamstead wrote: (unless you hire some sort of sniper on top of your building). Good idea! That mob from the APEC summit must be bored these days. firstly. use MAC filtering Yup. I have an ACL for MAC addrs. Can that be cracked? i.e. keep trying the *huge* MAC address space until they

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Rick Welykochy
DaZZa wrote: You should make sure you take the simple steps which *everyone* running wireless should do. 1) Disable SSID broadcast 2) Disable DHCP unless you absolutely *have* to use it. Already do the above two. SSID should only be used for public nets, I presume. And no DHCP. 3) Make the

Re: [SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Dean Hamstead
Hi Rick if someone is 'trying to connect' then fortunately they arent actually connecting. there isnt much you can do about people attempting to connect (unless you hire some sort of sniper on top of your building). however. if someone is actually attaching to your wireless lan, that is a d

[SLUG] Is someone is snooping my wireless?

2008-06-16 Thread Rick Welykochy
This may be off topic, but there is a lot of networking talent on SLUG. And the answers to this query will be very useful in general. A new icon I have never seen before for a PC connection to my wireless LAN has alerted me that someone the area is attempting to connect. The icon only indicates t