Two Wheeled Wi-Fi Sniffing Robot

paulnuyu writes "ZDNet/MSN has an article about a robot that detects Wi-Fi vulnerabilities and intrusions. The two wheeled robot made by the Shmoo Group cruised around the DefCon convention in Vegas last Sunday, picking up telnet and POP passwords. Though still a prototype, the shipping version is projected to have autonomous steering capabilities."

Comments

WiFi Robot Wars.

[Moosifer]

Now all they need to do is add an axe or a hammer to it so that it can take out rogue access points.

Re:Telnet and POP?

[jc42]

If anyone is still using plaintext to send passwords over their lan they are insane.

Well, a lot of people don't have any choice. Our cable ISP here, for example, provided the usual email accounts, and for a lot of customers, that is their only email. If you use it, you have no choice other than POP, and I haven't seen anything in several mailers that talks about encrypting the passwords. Our ISP doesn't actually block port 25, so you could run your own mailer. This isn't feasible for most customers, though, for several reasons. One is the dynamic IP addresses and insane hostnames. I've fixed that by using one of the many independent registration services, but to most customers, that would be utterly baffling and unusable. Another problem is that running your own email server is in fact in violation of the TOS in the ISP's contract, and they can legally block your port(s) or kick you off entirely at any time, without warning or recourse.

So for most non-geek customers, unencrypted POP passwords are the only option. There's probably no way they could even learn from the ISP that there's a problem; they certainly wouldn't get (or understand) any advice on how to fix it.

(Myself, I use an account at a school. It has been stable and usable for over 15 years now, unlike commercial email accounts that force you to change your address every 6 months whenever there's a merger, buyout, or corporate renaming. And I can use a plain-text mail reader, eliminating all problems with virii, worms and the like. But I'm not sure I'd recommend this to the typical non-geek.)

Two wheeled? Peshaw!

[fiftyvolts]

When he mods an Aibo so that it actually sniffs around, barks, and then points retriever style to the offending WiFi source then I'll be impressed.

"What's that boy?"

"Arf! Arf!"

"JImmy's unsing unencrypted WiFi?"