Enhanced WiFi Security Patch For FreeBSD

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 27, 2003 @09:31AM from the sekrit-treehouse-password dept.

Dan writes "Roland van Laar has a new, significant wi-fi patch for FreeBSD 5.1 and higher. The patch, available for download and testing, blocks clients with an empty or 'ANY' ssid and disables ssid broadcasting using the underlying firmware feature. SSID (Service Set ID) is used to identify wireless clients to a wireless / wired gateway. Wireless devices from the same manufacturer generally ship with the same default SSID. A beacon is a type of packet/frame that contains the SSID of a network. It is used to sync clocks on client devices and to make it easy for new network clients to see what networks are available. Preventing others from using your ssid is a means (although not foolproof!) of securing your wireless network."

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SSIDs? by Trbmxfz · 2003-12-27 10:20 · Score: 1, Interesting

I suppose it's good news that there are people who do care about Wifi security.

However, I'm wondering: how much security does SSID-based blocking add (could individuals forge SSIDs, or would they have to be organizations with cash and determination?)? Shouldn't all connections on a wireless network use a strong encoding (SSH or such)?

How do real people provide and use services that are normally insecure (NFS comes to mind) over Wifi?