Slashdot Mirror
Wireless Hacks
From the back cover we find that the book is targeted towards the intermediate to advanced wireless user, and I found that definitely to be the case. Some of the hacks use a lot of technical jargon, and assume a fair amount of background knowledge from the reader. You should probably already know how to get a wireless link up and running to really benefit from the book. But don't let that be a deterrent if you're a newbie. It's still a fun read, and provides a lot of ideas for the inquisitive and creative mind.
The book is very readable, (all the Hacks series books I have read would, like their venerable ancestor, UNIX Power Tools , make for great bathroom books). Each hack is self-contained, and can be read in just a few minutes. You can read the book straight through, or browse around, find what interests you and go from there. Most hacks have references to other hacks in the book, so reading it can be like browsing a web page sometimes. Many hacks also have references to further sources of information on the topic covered.There are hacks here for UNIX/Linux platforms mainly, but all you Ti/Al-Powerbook zealots will find plenty to lick your lips over as well, with several of the hacks devoted to wireless networking with OS X. There are even some for the Windows users as well. Many of the hacks (since they deal with hardware) could be utilized on any platform. Well, ok, you might have a bit of a hurdle to get your Pirouette cantenna hooked up to your vintage Apple ][c, but this book makes a good breeding-ground of ideas for those so inclined.
The book is divided into several chapters, each devoted to a particular topic. Each chapter contains a number of hacks related to that topic:
- Chapter 1, "The Standards," covers the alphabet soup of current wireless protocols, with a brief introduction to each.
- Chapter 2, "Bluetooth and Mobile Data," covers Bluetooth technology (need to use your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to act as a modem for your laptop in a pinch? If only those phones weren't so pricey...*sigh*)
- Chapter 3, "Network Monitoring," is all about finding out what's going on on the local network, including various ways to sniff traffic, broadcast network services, perform network discovery, and analyze traffic.
- Chapter 4, "Hardware Hacks," gets down to the metal, discussing topics ranging from boosting signal strength to building your own access point from micro form-factor hardware to cabling and antenna guides.
- Chapter 5, "Do-it-Yourself Antennas," describes various ways to build your own antennas all the way from Pringles cans to milled aluminum wave guides (Don't forget to use ventilation when soldering ;-).
- Chapter 6, "Long distance Links," offers tips on setting up, well, long distance wireless links.
- Chapter 7, "Wireless Security," dispels the vendor-propagated myths of WEP 'security,' and gives practical advice on how you can avoid the guy next door from sniffing your private traffic (not that you'd have anything to hide, of course...).
Throughout the book there is a lot of information repeated from Building Wireless Community Networks, as well as a few hacks copied over from Linux Server Hacks [Slashdot review here], but all together it makes a very useful collection, and a nice addition to O'Reilly's Hacks series.
So what's my take on it? If you're doing just about anything with an 802.11x network, you'll likely find something fun or useful here. If you're brand new to wireless networking, you may want to come up to speed with something a bit more tutorial-oriented. Perhaps one drawback to the book is its recipe-style format. There's not a lot of background information offered with each hack, but rather a lot "do this, then this, and you get this." If you're not used to hacking and experimenting with things, you might find yourself a bit lost. It certainly isn't a college textbook, which can be both good and bad, depending on what you're looking for.
Overall, if you're the forward-thinking, range-extending, hardware-tinkering, soldering-iron wielding, average slashdot reader, you'll probably find it a fun read with lots of good ideas to offer.
You can purchase Wireless Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
is also a useful book on the subject, covering 'a few scenarios involving wireless access that each manage to point out a different facet of wireless security.'
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
We use nocat ( www.nocat.net ) at work. Its free, its open source, and it is highly customizeable.
I live pretty close to a Starbucks with wireless. Has anyone had any experience using their service from home? Can you do it? Is it worth it? Do they leave wireless on when the store is closed?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I'm questioning the purpose of wireless technology. I understand that it's more convenient than a wired network but is there anything else?
Unless you've got an office full of notebooks, the best solution still seems to be a mixture of both wireless and wired...with wireless locked down as much as possible (even to the point of having to VPN through to the internal network).
It's fairly scary that one of the main reasons people go wireless if for convenience (and supposed simplicity for home users) -- and it's these same home users that will probably not take the time and effort to learn how to secure their network.
The Linksys WRT54g basestation/firewall/router/toaster is a MIPS box with 16mb of ram and linux...
n ksysWr t54g
This guy's got snort running on it:http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g.html (with a remote nfsmount for logs)
and these guys have info on hackin 'em:
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/Li
(I'm lazy, look out for the spaces)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Right now I can use the 'net all around the center of the city I live in, Leiden (of Pilgrims fame). In a few months a commercial ISP will provide internet access through the wifi-network. Quite how they want to make profit, I don't know. Still, it's cool to walk with my Ipaq (opie linux) in my hand and see all the networks around me. Most people just think I'm playing with some pda or gameboy.
I read this article awhile ago. Given that so many people are setting up wireless networks in their homes/apartments, it really makes me wonder how many of them are being hacked, and allowing their neighbors to get free Internet access.
On the other hand, it could be a good defense if you actually wanted to give your neighbor free access. ;-)
--
Slash
Are talking about sharing your bandwidth, or sharing the cost? Because Speakeasy has a setup where you can share your cable connection with a neighbor, and they will handle the billing.
Too bad I can only get Roadrunner. My neighbor has Roadrunner also, but they are home at different times of the day and really just use it as a faster AOL so they don't have to wait so long for pages to load. For a 50% reduction in costs, I'd probably see barely a 5% reduction in service.
...
I question wired networks. They make sense for servers and backbones. For most users though, wires to the desktop do not make sense. Copper isn't free, and you have to pay someone to run the wires to each desktop. Hope you run enough wires too, or you will pay him to go back latter when one guy comes up with a good reason to run 3 computers in his cube. (I've known several good reasons to do this) Of course you could run more wire to each cube just in case, but then your costs have gone up a lot more.
I also question the idea of not having an office full of laptops. For a company of any size, having a laptop around means you get work done for the few moments that a meeting doesn't require your care.
Run wireless and be done with it. The speed is plenty fast if you use care in the design. (Though I agree that security needs to be addressed) Servers need the bandwidth of real wires, if your desktop needs that much bandwidth you need to re-think your application.
While you are right to be concerned about the security aspects of 802.11 I think that the situation will improve before too long.
The current problem is that wireless cards work by broadcasting the signal out over a sphere, typically having a radius of around about 100m. This is great in that neither the transmitter or the receiver need to have much spatial directionality, however it meansd that anybody within that radius can tap into your traffic and start breaking any encryption you hyave going.
Now most people are trying to solve this by improving the encryption but here in the lab we are working on a different technique. We are using a directional system whereby a conducting channel is set up between the user and the access point meaning that any intruder would have to sit directly on this lne of sight, thereby greatly increasing their chances of detection.
The system works by not by electromagnetic radiation, but by using a stream of ions, which can be produced by common salt (NaCl), with a Na+ ion representing a binary 1 and a CL- representing a binary 0. At present the system is fairly experimental but I would expect to see it commercialized within a few years.
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
Last year at the WERN conference in Geneva I saw IBM demonstrate something along these lines which instead used muon and tau neutrinos to transmit data to their research facility in Kuala Lumpur. Because of the weak interaction with baryonic particles, they could use a line of sight path completely below the surface of the earth, so very secure. Although the helical magnets they used in the accelerator were relatively small, they said this would have to be a solution only for fixed wireless because of power requirements, at least until the ubiquity of fuel cell powered devices, probably at least 5 years out.