NASA Overcomes 802.11b Wireless Security Flaws

4mn0t1337 writes: "Looks like the people at NASA came up with a "solution" to the weak secrutity in 802.11: Bypass it. From the article: "The team also assumed that all information on the network would be subject to eavesdropping, and that no identification information built into 802.11b could be trusted." So they chose to disable it, and set up an 'off-the-shelf PC running the OpenBSD operating system, an Apache web server, the Internet Software Consortium DHCP server, the IPF firewall software' and just depend on the security in protocols the services use. Moral of the story: Ignore the 802.11 security and just tunnel into our access points ..."

Comments

That's a pretty sad response

[mesocyclone]

Tunneling works for security, but it is far less flexible than plain old IP connectivity, which is what 802.11b delivers.

The solution is to *fix* 802.11b's security, which shouldn't be that hard. I believe that simply running the crypto algorithm through a few start cycles, before transmitting, is sufficient to stop the published attacks.

Whether the fix requires buying new hardware, or flashing old hardware, or just changing drivers, is another question.

Why did it take this long for people to get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really no different then plugging into a hostile, unswitched network. Trust no one! Sure, it's easier to "plug" into a wireless network, but you should never trust any traffic medium. Encryption all the way!