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."

Comments

Re:WEP (in)security assumptions

[David Jao]

WEP is known to be insecure. However, for the average joe, it is good enough ... 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?

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.