Slashdot Mirror
802.11 WiFi Denial of Service Exploit Discovered
CRC'99 writes "The Queensland University of Technology has today announced yet another flaw in 802.11 products. AusCERT has the official statement, noting: 'An attacker using a low-powered, portable device such as an electronic PDA and a commonly available wireless networking card may cause significant disruption to all WLAN traffic within range, in a manner that makes identification and localisation of the attacker difficult.' Nice to know that a simple PDA could bring a WiFi network to its knees."
Oh yeah, real nice. Now we can all sleep well at night knowing about this!
using something as small, cheap and common as a hammer I may cause significant disruption to *all* computer activity within walking distance.
The good old wire prevails!
-Imidazole2
A jammer - in the spesific sence of a white-noise transmitter - wouldn't give a 'denial of service' style attack. It would drown out the other transmitters, thus fooling your device into thinking that there is no network avilable. Perhaps we should call it a Lack of Carrier Attack? Splitting hairs, I know ;).
That, and using a PDA and a network card is a much geekier - and thus more intersting - way of doing it. Jammers are soooo 80's.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Would like to buy second-hand WiFi-enabled PDA, preferably low-powered. Please email me at: big.nothing@bigger.com
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I was under the impression that such public frequency devices like Wifi and cordless telephones were forbidden from preventing jamming and also must not interfer with other devices themselves!?
This is so scary. I just woke up from a dream about the headlines on /. Yes really.
The top story was an article about how to make your own world-population-destroying-virus using a fish tank full of squirrel urine, and the editor had put some snide comment about "Why use squirrel piss when you can make your own terror virus using a tank of ordinary thirstful water?" and I was thinking "No fucking way is thirstful a word".
There were no comments on the story and I was going to first post something like:
--
"Why use squirrel piss when you can make your own terror virus using a tank of ordinary thirstful water?"
Because you must labour long and hard collecting the piss from squirrels while you think of the faces of your enemies...
--
Now is that sad or what? Note, this is not some bizarre, fucked-up troll post, I really did just have this dream, and was sad enough to post it to slashdot. (Did I really just check to see if the top story was about a terror virus??? How insane am I?????).
P.S. the 2nd story was something about the mouse driver in X and how you shouldn't recode it for every application, but have only one mouse driver (!) and I was going to make some humerous post about "without a mouse driver, how is anyone these days going to be able to shut down their computer?". Well, it was funnier when I was asleep.
graspee
Yup. In other breaking news, microwave ovens operating at certain frequencies have just been discovered to be an effective DoS tool for wireless networks within a limited range.
Another undisclosed report by the NSA reports that hammers are pretty effective too, though their range is extremely short.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I believe the (not-so-interesting) term for a post lacking content or intelligence but appearing to have them is "karma whoring".
Daniel
Carpe Diem
wife: "honey, wait i'll make some breakfast for you"
(puts ready-to-cook-meal in the microwave)
husband:damn this network! how many times i told you not to cook while i work....
wife:ooops!
pfft, we all know the exploit is covering the targets house in tin foil so it can't penetrate
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
A slashdotter is furiously spinning his wheels trying to figure out how to pin this on Microsoft. Because we all know that serious security issues can only be the result of evil capitalists cutting corners and simultaneously writing bloated code to satisfy the sinful graphical desires of lusers.
Yes. It's what's known as testing. ;-)
I'm pretty sure factual knowledge is, by definition, off topic for /. so I'm going to have to ask you to take it elsewhere.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
I prefer using cordless phones and microwave ovens to jam up my 802.11 equipment. Sure it's low tech, but I'm lazy damnit!
Then I fear the terrorists have already won ...