Secret Service Goes War Driving

JSC writes "Looks like the Secret Service is taking a page from the WarDriving handbook. Your tax dollars at work includes springing for the Pringles can for the antenna."

Comments

They aren't doing it to get free bandwidth

[Dancin_Santa]

They are planning on informing companies that they have leaky wireless networks. They aren't doing it to leach bandwidth like most wardrivers.

Its Warchalking....

[siliconshock.com]

Warchalking PDF FAQ and check out This site

Pringles Can Antenna

[p00kiethebear]

Ive been wanting to make one of these for awhile now. You can find some absolutely splendiferous pictures here: http://verma.sfsu.edu/users/wireless/pringles.php

Re:Why is this coming from taxes?

[mamba-mamba]

From the article:

Chris McFarland, head of the Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force, said his agents have begun evaluating computer security along with other concerns when they scout out a place where the president or other protected dignitary will go.

McFarland said, for example, that agents have had extensive discussions with officials at George Washington Hospital about improving its wireless network security.

While the agents plan to offer their expertise to anyone who asks, they are focusing on places most important to their mission of protecting public officials. The hospital is several blocks from the White House and treated Vice President Dick Cheney ( news - web sites) during his heart problems.

[emphasis added]
MM
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Re:So how do you secure a wireless LAN?

[mgaiman]

Linksys has a fairly good knowledge base article for securing their APs: Here

Too hard?

[phyxeld]

from the article: But they are sold with no security measures, and protecting a wireless network from hackers takes more knowledge than what network installation guides typically offer.

Every access point I've ever setup had simple instructions for enabling WEP. Granted, WEP isn't the end-all of wireless security, but I'll bet that the the SS's definition of "secure" and "not secure" is equivilent to "wep" or "no wep". Granted, most of the networks I see wardriving (airboxing!) have a default ssid like "linksys" or "WLAN", so I guess a lot of users probably never even attempt to configure their AP. But it certainly doesn't require "more knowledge than network installation guides typically offer".

Re:So how do you secure a wireless LAN?

[ThePlumber2]

Easy, first you firewall your machine to only allow ssh out. Then you create a subnet with only your AP. Then you create a VPN server on another subnet. Install vpn over ssh, train the firewall that is between these subnets and you are on your local network, via a 1024 bit rsa encrypted pipe.

No web, no bullshit. No-one else can use your wireless to get to the internet or communicate to your machine.

Thanks,

Steve

PS You CANNOT rely on the security of these pieces of shit. Most all AP's come with fucked up open ports that you cannot shut down (Web int is one although I have seen that the piece of shit Netgear AP has 3 open ports, one is snmp which is probably open to the snmp trap bug that was out about 4 months ago.)

Seems to me that the manufactures of these peices of crap dont have a clue about security and decided not to give you the option of security either. Netgear of all place (Banyan Vines right?) should know, but when I called them, all I got was some fucked up off-shore help desk (in INDIA of all places) I sat on the phone working through language barriers to finally find out that the tech of course had no fucking idea of what I was saying. They eventually called me back to tell me that there is no way to turn these services off..... My next stop was the store to return their junk. That is when I decided to buy the piece of shit Linksys that i now have (Although it is better if you ask me, and they support linux). No matter what though, you will have a hard time finding one that is truly secure. Take it into your own hands though. I did. In fact, im writing this from my notebook in my bed, wirelessly.

Re:The article got this one right

[Agent Green]

Just bear in mind that the amount of patience and time required to collect enough packets for AirSnort may take you awhile.

I have yet to find anyone who has really been able to bust a WEP key in a period of less than 4 hours...and this is in a high-traffic lab environemnt. I tried for 2 days in my home lab without success...then gave up.

Several vendors have patched their firmware so no FFs appear in the initialization vector, so Airsnort's use is somewhat limited on those networks to transmissions from other notebooks...and if the site is running Cisco hardware with LEAP, forget about it.

Unless you plan to put a laptop in somewhere and leave it for a few days, don't get your hopes up too much on getting enough packets.