Wireless Clouds for Good and Ill

dr_delete sent in a story about Athens, Georgia joining the ranks of municipalities creating free public wireless networks. In a counterpoint to that, we have the Pentagon cracking down on wireless devices, trying to control information leakage. And Newsforge has a story about starting your own wireless ISP. Nifty stuff.

Comments

For Good and 3?

[RumGunner]

Is that the number of secure wireless networks?

Fidonet.

[f00Dave]

Anyone remember when a small group of people, disaffected with CompuSpend and other BBS corps got together and formed their own distributed network, based on private citizen's telco services? Wondering if the same thing will happen with medium-to-wide area networks? I mean, now that the 802.whateveritwas hack-thing is out there (you know, the one that lets you do wireless over medium-area distances), how long before people shuck off the "shackles" of their ISP and start forming small Winternet groups?

(Oh god, I might have just coined something. Quick! Alert Wired! =] )

The logistics of gluing small (urban?) 'clouds' together comes down to boundary-routing. Now, if only there was an 802.somethingelse hack that let these 'clouds' contact each other over inter-city distances, the Winternet wouldn't depend on Spring or Bellnexxia or whoever is backboning, today.

Cross your fingers. ;-)

Whats the big deal about the Pentagon?

[Arcturax]

When I saw the Pentagon mentioned along with a crackdown, I expected something about them cracking down on citizens. Instead it is simply about the Pentagon taking the wise move to curtail wireless WITHIN the military only use until they can be assured it can be used securely. That strikes me as a smart move, closing a hole that a terrorist or assassin might have otherwise used. Its good to see those in the Pentagon using their brains and thinking of interesting ways they might have security problems rather than having a tragedy happen first.

Responsibility

[Tazzy531]

In an earlier speech at the same conference, President Bush's top cybersecurity adviser, Richard Clarke, said the technology industry was acting irresponsibly by selling wireless tools such as computer network devices that remain remarkably easy for hackers to attack.

The industry's most common data-scrambling technique designed to keep out eavesdroppers, called the wireless encryption protocol, can be broken -- usually in less than five minutes -- with software available on the Internet.

"It is irresponsible to sell a product in a way that can be so easily misused by a customer in a way that jeopardizes their confidential and proprietary and sensitive information," Clarke said.

I think that is the dumbest analysis ever. Everyone that has to worry about confidential data and has the know-how of setting up a wireless network already knows that the medium is insecure. The industry never promised a secure network. I mean, if he wants to take this route, why don't we say that it was irresponsible that they developed the internet because TCP/IP is also rather insecure.

Also, why don't they use the same line with guns. "The gun industry is inherently irresponsible because guns are inherently dangerous and insecure" or "The airline industry is acting irresponsibly because they don't have locks on the cockpit doors."

I think what many people fail to see is that originally, the internet was based on a trust system. It was more important to get data through then to protect them. That however has changed. However, we shouldn't tell the industry to stop innovating because of the potential for misuse. Wireless devices are a great leap from the wired networks of prior. And it is widely known that anything going over a public network is inherently insecure.

I would argue that this "cybersecurity advisor" really has no idea what he's talking about.

change of tune for DOD?

[Hollins]

President Bush's top cybersecurity adviser, Richard Clarke, said the technology industry was acting irresponsibly by selling wireless tools such as computer network devices that remain remarkably easy for hackers to attack.

The industry's most common data-scrambling technique designed to keep out eavesdroppers, called the wireless encryption protocol, can be broken -- usually in less than five minutes -- with software available on the Internet.

A few years ago, the U.S. government attempted to make all encryption crackable by government agencies by mandating key escrow or weak encryption. At one point, they even tried to jail Phil Zimmermann for creating and publishing PGP. Now they're berating vendors for making encryption in their products too weak and have become advocates for strong consumer encryption. Other countries that have had no encryption controls in the past are now trying to adopt key escrow requirements.

I find the reversal fascinating. Few easier ways exist to execute an electronic wiretap than to packet-sniff the subject's WiFi connection. I'm curious if there are internal struggles over encryption policy.