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Wi-Fi in the Sky
mindless4210 writes "In an attempt to have the greatest warflying run to date, members from Daily Wireless, Tom's Hardware, SoCalWUG, and Highlands Highspeed teamed up for an amazing two-plane mission around Southern California. They picked up over 3000 access points and 900 clients, established a point to point link between the two planes, and successfully video conferenced in real time over the connection. This is also the first time that the wireless network detection tool Kismet has been taken up in the air, reporting over twice as many APs as NetStumbler. There is some footage of the flight in divx format available here."
You can slow a 172 down to about 60 MPH if you're careful. Dunno about the Piper though.
irb(main):001:0>
This is true; WEP is known to be insecure. However, for the average joe, it is good enough - its the whole target of oppurtunity thing - would you as a hacker, spend a night in your car outside some dudes house in the hopes that they might compplete an online transaction with a CC?
It also prevents bandwidth leeching from all but the most determined.
For companies etc, the solution you mention is of course the better one; they stand to lose much more to a hacker, and can afford to pay someone to set up your solution.
Most people though neither have the time nor the skills, nor, for that matter, the need of such an elaborate solution.
I agree that for most people (and maybe even for me), WEP is good enough. However I should point out that I did actually spend a night cracking my own access point's WEP encryption and my success in that effort is what motivated me to seek a better solution.
My bigger objection is with the article's premise that the unWEP'd networks are automatically insecure. WEP is neither necessary nor (fully) sufficient for really good security. People who really know what they're doing don't actually use WEP. The writers of this article (and many other writers) present a very simple "TURN ON WEP" message that does not adequately convey the subtleties of what is in fact a very complicated security situation.
I don't necessarily expect a sermon in every article, but I would appreciate a more moderated message and at least some kind of acknowledgement that there is more going on behind the scenes.
As a pilot myself, I've got to say that these guys didn't exactly have their heads screwed on straight the day they went to do this. You couldn't PAY me enough to fly formation with another pilot whom I didn't know well, and someone obviously wasn't being too careful if doors are popping open. The wi-fi transmitters probably aren't that big of a deal, but I believe it may still be illegal, and I'd hate to do have all that gear running without a decent idea of what it was going to do to my avionics. Overall, a stunt like this does little to advance any sort of "science", and probably wasn't worth the risk to the 4 lives involved
-JT
Ok, so you are saying dailywireless.com of stealing the domain name???? Good webmasters will register all the .net/.org/.com addresses for the domain names.
Seems dailywireless.org needs to hire another webmaster.
not5150
So there are a lot of WAP's open and unsecured. Big deal. Mine at home is open, by choice. I like the idea. If everyone had open WLAN's attached to ADSL/Similar, then I could go pretty much anywhere and access the net on my laptop. I would return the favour by paying fo a connection that other people could use in the same way. I like that world in my imagination where everyone allows access and so everyone has access. If it gets abused for spam I'll lock it down, yes I am a realist in a small way. Attack is not so much an isue as all the machines on th WLAN have firewall software.