On Thursday, July 18, 2002, at 10:24 AM, Dickon Newman wrote:
> Does anyone out there know what realistic problems exist with wirless > networks? > > We use several point-to-point devices, and point-to-multipoint. Is it > possible for someone to evasdrop on the point-to-points? Is that type > of > equipment avaliable to the common/avid user to allow them to perform > such > activites? I'm sure your aware of war driving. People can jump on networks with just wireless cards and sometimes antenna via an access point on your network. While on the network an attack would become more of an internal attack, but you aren't going to have the option of monitoring them aside from a MAC address and their IP on your network. Wireless Access point using WEP encryption can still be cracked and eavesdropping is possible through packet analysis. Breaking WEP is becoming more difficult because net-sniffing programs such as Air-snort require that "interesting"(basically corrupted or weak packets) are found to break the encryption, and many wireless access point have been updated to deal with these packets without transmitting them. This by no means that breaking WEP isn't possible, but it is not as easy. If you are looking for something to protect your network, consider cloaked access points. All of your hardware and software must be kept in perfect check, because one unpatched system can lead to access to the access point. I am aware of a programs for Linux called wlanfe that is capable of hopping on cloaked networks. If you don't set an SSID and try to connect, the wireless card will jump onto the access point with the strongest signal near-by, regardless of whether it is cloaked. I have no idea to prevent this phenomenon from occurring. I hope this cleared up some of your wireless worries. TuxB0x
