Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

802.11 WiFi Denial of Service Exploit Discovered

Posted by simoniker on from the block-block-kick dept.

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."

4 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. jammers? by tasinet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    weren't they called JAMMERS back in the nice radio-sharks times? Jam the 11 802.11 band frequencies and you have a "DoS" attack...

  2. So you want to DOS a wifi ?? by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can you say, "cheap microwave oven" ???

    The cheaper, the better.

    Want to screw your neighbor over?
    take the cover off the oven and turn it on.
    Just don't be in the same room when you throw the switch, sort of like when the executioner lights up a prisoner in "Old Sparky"...

    Pick one up off the side of the road and then do a google site search on /. for HERF.....

    Have fun kiddies!!

  3. It was an obvious problem by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    it's easy to flood a wireless network, when using colision avoidance, if you're the only one not playing by the rules, you can own the network. It's like being on a token ring, and editing your protocol stack, to never put new tokens on, once you get one, Nobody else gets to send. Any protocol can be broken if you have computers that don't follow the protocol.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  4. Re:Exactly how is this surprising? by dachshund · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A microwave oven can bring down a WiFi network. You could plug a 110 volt line into an Ethernet jack if you felt like it. All shared media networks require cooperation in order to run correctly.

    Because I can't carry a microwave around in my pocket, and it would require some significant source of electricity. This requires only a PDA, and presumably doesn't drain its batteries in a matter of seconds the way RF jamming would.

    Honestly, this isn't as useful an attack as some of the targeted ones (see a paper written by Bellardo and Savage) where you can knock a specific individual off the net (and then potentially reconnect them to your own "access point".) But it still has some advantages over brute-force jamming.