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CNN Notices that WiFi is Insecure
josh3736 writes "From CNN comes an article that makes painstakingly obvious to the public what we already knew: 802.11 security is horrible. The article points out that nearly 40% of wireless network APs haven't even been changed from defaults and as many as 80% of home APs have encryption disabled. The article goes on to say that '[t]o make matters worse, users who don't secure their networks are often the very people who don't keep their computers up to date with the latest security patches and antivirus software.' It also accuses WiFi manufacturers of disabling security measures by default to make wireless easy to the lowest common denominator. My favorite quote? 'Experts say that while Wi-Fi hardware makers have made initial setup easy, the enabling of security is anything but. Meanwhile, average users are no longer tech savvy.' Which is to say that they at one point were?"
One major flaw I see in telling people to enable WEP on their WiFi is the first question I'm sure to get back is "How do I do that?" and, well, the instructions for doing that are different for each and every item on their network.
What's more annoying is that people think the "passphrase" they type into their router a the WiFi key rather than what it usually really is, the random seed from which their router generates the actual keys. They type their passphrase into their other devices when they're supposed to type a key value, and then they wonder why it doesn't work anymore when it was working just fine before they tried this security stuff.
I've had friends who I thought were tech savvy get tripped up over this stuff. I blame the router-makers for not providing software that makes this a whole lot more of a user-friendly experience. We as the IT industry are badly failing at this... and having a lot of open WiFi points will just make our other headaches such as spam and viruses worse in the end. This really needs to be addressed for the good of the Internet.
...I kept my Linksys WAP11 box wide open until one day I sat down at my computer to see that some fellow using the machine name "god" had joined the network and sent me a NetBIOS "net send" message. Ho ho, how clever.
Sigh... OK, fun time's over, no more sharing, hook up USB cable, generate hex key, etc. Kind of depressing.
The Army reading list
Of course they were. Around the time of the Apple I. Since then, the average cluefulness of computer users around the world has been plummeting because computers have been getting easier to use and the bar to entry has been lowered, with humorous results such as people using clueless people's WAPs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, believe it or not, at one point your average user was at least marginally tech savvy.
That point in time was somewhere around 1985, and possibly on upwards to the early to mid 1990's. Not so, since Windows became synonymous with PC, and the Internet began to define personal computing.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Not only do WiFi equipment manufacturers disable most of the security by default. Some blame any connectivity issues you are having on the encryption (see How stable is WEP).
Personally, I would love to see some more options when it comes to turning WEP on. Since my laptop connects in both a wired and wireless manner to my network, it would be great is some software generated a new WEP key to use each time I went wired. I see no reason that the end user would need to be involved, any weakess on the part of the pseudo-random generation of a new WEP key would be less insecure than having the same one for months on end.
paul reinheimer
The very reason that Wi-Fi networks exist is that they provide simple, easy-to-use network connectivity wherever you are. Security takes a backseat to ease of use. The equipment manufacturers don't want to have to deal with the support calls if they would enable security features, such as WEP, out of the box. Adding security to Wi-Fi networks makes them harder to use and less appealing to the average consumer. Thus, it's easier for manufacturers if consumers remain blissfully unaware of the huge backdoors into their networks. But then again, anonymous internet access from my neighbor isn't that bad.
When WiFi was just getting started only tech savvy users used it, meaning that the average WiFi user was tech savvy. Now, everyone and their mother (or at least my mother) is using WiFi, and the tech ability of the average user has gone down.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
I enjoy the fact that most idiots have wifi encryption disabled and the defaults set. It makes my life easier when I'm biking or traveling with my laptop or ipaq.
Most residential and a lot of commercial areas give me free access to the internet - they may or may not know it, I don't really care.
I don't check my email or browse until I vpn into my home network. Just in case someone is sniffing packets - lets not make it that easy.
And the reason that Linksys and the rest of them don't enable it by default - tech support costs.
users who don't secure their networks are often the very people who don't keep their computers up to date with the latest security patches and antivirus software
I wonder if this would be a new, easy way for people to start a new worm/virus infection. Wardrive down the street, map a few hundred potential victims, and come back later and put the bugger in the "Startup" menu on Windows PCs. Ack.
Once the 'puter became a household appliance instead of a hacker's toy, that's when things started to go downhill.
Yeah, right.
I don't regularly wardrive, because I don't own a car; I use pubtrans. Anyways, in Houston, Texas, between Gessner and I-10 and Kirkwood and Memorial, I counted no fewer than ten open networks, all running Linksys G routers. All of them had their DHCP servers up and running, and all had the default admin passwords up.
Admittedly, it's nice to have open connections, but if people don't bother to secure them... well, people could do nasty things to the routers and screw with the connections.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
... has the not surprising statistic that 90% of home users DONT GIVE A FLYING FUCK if the family PC (which they consider no more than an expensive Nintendo/source of free music) is hacked.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
WiFi without security "just works".
WiFi with security is a configuration nightmare.
So people keep things "just working". When this becomes a problem, we'll see things change. That's how it actually works in security -- be the problem dozens of open daemons on Unix hosts, canary-less stacks in executable code, or a lack of significant checking for airline contraband, the problem is not addressed until it's exploited. When people start getting hacked through their open wireless, we'll see open wireless shut down. For the moment, they'll worry about real problems, like worms and spyware (aka corporate virii).
Ironically enough, it was bluetooth's security model that made it such a nightmare to work with -- the whole pairing process increased the setup load by several orders of magnitude. They're finally going to fix this with Near Field, but it'll take a while for them to get it out (have they even admitted it's for secure key exchange yet?).
Note, I've never said this is how things should be. Ought is not is.
--Dan
The WAP I'm using is in out-of-the-box factory default insecure mode.
I really wish I knew which of my neighbors owns it.
-JDF
Yesterday while watching TV over a buddies house I saw a commerical that Verizon is going to be giving away (after you mail in the rebate) a wireless hub with all their new DSL subscribers.
This just frightens me.
I'm just imaging the sheeple who will order DSL, get this wireless router, follow the nice glossy fold out instructions and set the thing up, with no understanding of wireless security whatsoever.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
He said, "As long as I live in this city, I'll never pay for Internet again." We'll see if that remains true when consumers with wireless routers wise up and turn on some of the security features.
--Residential Interior Design
I have intentionally left WEP off on my AP at home. I use ssh or https for anything sensitive, but I want my visitors to be able to connect via my home
network without sophisticated configuration on their side (and of course, without telling them my WEP password).
My home network is connected via Linux firewall, so I can cut the access or install traffic shaping when the problem occurs.
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
Is it legal to connect to open wireless acess points ?
It used to take a lot of tech knowledge to even operate a personal computer so the people that used them were, by definition, tech savy.
But in order to sell more computers the hardware and software manufactureres have perpetuated the myth that "computers are easy." The truth: operating computers is very easy, but maintaining them is still very difficult. Now the average user is not tech savy, but they have a machine that only tech savy people can maintain.
TW
Did they also notice the sky is blue?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Meanwhile, average users are no longer tech savvy
perhaps the article means the average users of wifi are no longer tech savy, i.e. it has become mainstream. not that average users of technology are no longer tech savy....
just my 2c
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
What a step down in usability!!!!
Both products have a web site that you can go to to make changes. Neither has the address printed prominently on the outside of the unit along with the default user and pass, the first step in making it easy.
I always found the netgear configuration easy, intuitive, and with tons of help. On the other hand the linksys configuration is horrible.
Once upon a time, the average user *was* tech-savvy.
Back before computers put a pretty appearance on everything with Windows XP wizards, or even 98, you had to know DOS to get anything done on a computer system, you had to know keyboard commands, and a basic idea of what the ports on your PC did.
The "average user" was more tech-savvy because there were fewer uses back then, since the learning curve was higher.
Now, with everything plug-and-play, it's much easier to not understand what's really going on inside the magical blue-and-black or grey box with a pair of antenna sticking up from the sides of it.
On my system, I use a Belkin 54G access point. SSID belkin54g. No crypto, no authentication, no MAC filtering. But, you're not going to get anywhere off the wireless segment if you connect to it. The firewall behind the WAP is configured to drop all traffic except the encrypted PPTP tunnels which the wireless clients actually use to connect to the wired infrastructure and the external router. Thus, anyone is welcome to try and get onto my network, but without having a valid account on the 2K3 Enterprise Server box playing router/connection master, and knowing the encryption keys, they're going to get precicely nowhere.
I don't use it, either. I've checked the range, and it doesn't reach to any neighboring houses. If someone wants to hang around on my porch and use my Internet access, then good for them. If you think I'm worried about someone finding my house through "war driving", you must be nuts. I don't live in Manhattan. You'd be wasting your time driving around where I live looking for free WiFi.
I agree with some of the other posts on the main thread, I don't so much care about people trying to see what I'm doing, I have SSH, VPNs, PGP, and other mechanisms that can do that for me when I really need to send passwords and other sensitive information over the internet. My main insentive for securing my wireless AP is so that people can't use my connection for illegal purposes.
It's a liability issues, and it doesn't seem like a big deal until one day you have to find a way to prove to the Feds and your ISP that it wasn't you sending kiddie porn to some offshore server in Eastern Europe. If your name is on the bill for that connection, I'm sure you signed a contract somewhere that states you are responsible for not allowing illegal activity on your connection.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
I'm guilty of it myself. I set up a wireless access point for my mom a couple years ago. Changed the SSID name, changed the default pw on the router and let her have at it. No problem.
Of course, as the next year rolled on, more and more wi-fi users were born. Wireless starts becoming standard with new laptops. Almost once a week someone calls in on TechTV and asks about wireless networking. I start hearing more and more about WEP encryption and MAC filtering, and eventually head back over to my mom's to redress my mistakes.
Sure enough, there were several leeches to knock off, but the point remains. As the technology grows, the users become more savvy, and these current security holes should diminish significantly.
CNN is an American TV network. The average American thinks that Bill Gates invented the personal computer (and that he is a national hero and a role model to be looked up to), that Excel is a general-purpose database program, that SQL is a Microsoft product ("SQL Server"), and that there is some inherent difference between Dell and Compaq. They randomly attribute any type of computer flakiness to "viruses" or "hackers", since those are the only causes for bork-ups that they understand. And just now their mass-market news network is discovering that WiFi is insecure. Is this any surprise? I'm just hoping that some day CNN will "discover" that Microsoft didn't invent the GUI, and that AOL isn't the Internet...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Wi-Fi out of the box is of course insecure. It can be made secure with a number of different methods (WEP not being one of them, heh, but there is WPA and other things). I believe one of the best features of Wi-Fi is its ease of setup and use -- if you have an open AP, anyone who comes over to your house can just use it with no or almost no configuration. It's incredibly easy and convenient.
What's the drawback? Anyone in your neighborhood has access to your local network. But it's unlikely that someone who wanted to h4x0r you would drive up your street and sit in front of your house. It is of course possible, and depends on your neighborhood. If you're the type who locks the house even when you're at home, then definitely get a security protocol. If, like me, you leave the garage door open and doors unlocked, then securing your Wi-Fi isn't something I would worry about.
So this is no surprise, but neither (in my opinion) is it a big deal.
I just love how I can take my laptop almost anywhere and get Internet connectivity. Last week I was at my mom's house doing some work on geneaology with my laptop and when I booted up, lo and behold - a wireless connection that was wide open!! It was nice to be able to check my e-mail and look at research sites online right then and there rather than either having to dial in or wait until I got home.
I've seen the same thing lots of other places including a friend's apartment in Minneapolis where I found 3 wireless access points, only one of which was encrypted and at my own single family house, I get two open wireless connections besides my own encrypted one.
I have to agree that setting up the secured connection are not obvious, especially when you have one manufacturer's access point and another manufacturer's wireless product in your laptop. It took me a little head scratching and trial and error before I got mine working.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
The problem is not the product, but the consumers. Now, I might be wrong about this, but I am willing to bet that all access points, WNIC's and other accessories come with something called a "manual"! If you were to actually *read* one of those, by accident or intent, you might discover how to acutally use your newly accuired product! Only thing is that people don't bother anymore... They expect everything to be so userfriendly that it will install itself and automatically know how you want the settings to be!! Maybe they could put little warnings on the packs like with ciggaretts.. "warning, the DOJ says that not properly securing your accesspoint can be hazardous to your privacy bank account, and or bandwith".. Heh
so what about all the non SSL sites you visit which "need" passwords.
Most of these are not encrypted, and ask for the password in plaintext - are you happy to have this information public?
It may not sound important (due to the stupidly high number of websites which need membership to see some lame front page), but if you ever reuse a password [like I do - and most others do, come on... admit it], you could be cracked quite easily.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
And here I've deliberately left my WAP open to the public in the hopes that people would use it for illegal purposes so as to hide my own evil activities behind theirs... sadly I've had no takers yet... I guess there aren't too many evil war drivers in a town of 6200.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I live in an apartment complex, and I was stunned to see not only how many people had wireless, but how many ran w/o WEP and w/o changing defaults-last count in my largish apartment complex, better than 20 visible from street level (i.e. not right under their bedroom windows) and a good 40-50% of those completely unprotected. I use WEP and I changed the defaults but I'm under no illusions that this makes me safe. What I think helps, though, is that in my case there are at least 4 other WiFi users in my apartment building alone that are wide open. So as long as there are easier targets, I think WEP's done its job as well.
If cheap-o consumer routers getting 0wned thanks to pathetic Wi-Fi security seems bad, consider this: at least one vendor of e-voting systems depends on WEP as the only security measure between their voting machines and the ballot-counting system.
Yes, that's right -- ballots are passed wirelessly, and only protected via standard 802.11 WEP. How long until someone tries to 0wn a polling place? Or, worse, just sniffs the ballots out of the air and dumps them to a log file (so much for the secret ballot), say?
I wrote the article linked to above when the systems were being evaluated in Fairfax County, Virginia -- a wealthy and populous suburb of Washington, DC -- but they've since been approved by the county board of elections and used in two elections to date. Who knows how many other local governments have bought into similar systems?
Read my blog.
If you trust every router between you and your destination with a plaintext password, you are crazy. The IETF is moving towards encryption for everything, and people are following. Most universities now don't allow passwords to ever be sent plaintext over the wire.
Quit blaming wireless, the same security issues exist with wired connections.
My upstairs neighbor (apt. building) has an unencrypted Wireless Linksys router hooked up to his Broadband connection. If I wasn't hosting my domain's e-mail from one of my home machines, I would have cancelled my broadband a long time ago.
You're joking. C'mon, I mean... like, no way. It all makes sense now... if CNN is this far behind on technology, which moves pretty fast, then they are probably a good 25-30 years behind on their political reporting and viewpoints.
Damn hippies.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
I have two WiFi APs at home. One of these has a WEP key, and is the one all of my devices use. It bridges directly to my "real" network. The other one I leave open just out of the goodness of my heart. I have a dedicated NAT router behind it, and connections coming in on the open access point are the only things that use that router.
So far, no problems, and people have thanked me heartily for giving them internet access in a pinch.
Given this setup, what risks do I run? The only one I can think of is that someone has a bunch of kiddie porn torrents just waiting to start up in a server in a van somewhere. Does that really happen? If Osama Bin Laden walks down my street (he'd probably strut, actually), and uses my "free" WiFi to send threatening emails to major governments, do I go to Guantanamo Bay?
How is this different from NYC offering free WiFi access in Bryant Park?
My brother got a call a few months ago. They were having trouble with their Internet connection dropping all the time. He went to the site and found a brand new Dell with a wireless card. When he asked where the access point was, they looked at him like he was from Mars.
They had ordered their machine with a wireless card and thought that was all they needed. They were obviously piggy-backing onto a neighbor's wireless LAN but when my brother tried to explain that to them, they accused him of lying to them.
> Which is to say that they at one point were?
I knew DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 inside and out. As the OS interface and glitches have lessened (yeah yeah, no really, there simply are fewer conflicts in recent versions of Windows), my need to understand how the OS functions has diminished. I'm just another dumb Windows user now. When I need to futz with my wireless router, I grab the manual to remember how the damn thing works.
In the end, I prefer it this way. Life is easier when technology just works and I don't need to understand why. Geeks aside, that's how most people want to live their lives.
I have to agree with this. A few years ago, nobody would even think of setting up a network in their house unless they already worked as a system administrator, or other heavy-duty IT professional. Nowadays everyone who owns more than one computer wants to hook them together.
It's not that the overall level of savy has decreased, it's that the definition of "average user" has spread to the technopeasant masses.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
If you live in a trailer, do you really need WiFi? A 5-metre ethernet cable should do the trick. :-)
I saw an ad the other day for it. I suspect this and other such deals will greatly increase the number of clueless people using wireless routers in my area.
:)
My brother and I are looking forward to future war driving expeditions in my area.
On the other hand, maybe the technicians will set them up securely?
Obviously you should change your password on the router itself so that random drivebys don't screw with your settings.... but if you're running ssh, ssl, etc. how dangerous is it to leave your access point open? There seems to be a group of people in the thread that are like "geeze idiots, my AP is like fort knox". The other crowd says "I leave mine open INTENTIONALLY".
I'm sort of one of these people that dreams of the day when we have a huge community mesh and people can tell their cell phone carriers to piss off.... but I don't want to leave my access point open if some bonehead is going to hack my box.
Anyway, I've never seen anybody tell me the difference between 1) plugging your machine into your cable modem directly and walling up your machine by shutting ports down, etc. and 2) having a wireless access point. Is having a machine on an insecure access point any more dangerous than having a machine hooked up to the open internet on a cable modem or some such?
I mean, the wired internet really is one big network after all, and there are risks associated with being on it. If you're not behind a firewall, wired or wireless, what's the difference?
SSH and SSL encryption migh make your connection slow... but usually only if you are pumpint huge amounts of data or your computer is crap.
But most Wireless chipsets have WEP in the hardware (or atleast in firmware) and don't give a performance loss at all.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I do a fair bit of house-call work in my area. (Pays the bills...) I've set up a fair number of WiFi networks at homes and offices over the past few years. Most of the home networks do not have WEP enabled.
Contrary to popular belief, WEP is quite useful. Unless you have a script, you probably won't break the key. Getting and using the script is a malicious act... And there are so many other EASIER targets.
For businesses, I enable WEP by default. (Actually, I recommend that they stick to wired networks when possible... but these days, they don't listen. When they ask "but can you do this?" I say yes.) WEP is a pain to setup for the business owner... so I get repeat business when they add another station. I've tried writing instructions, but I usually end up visiting anyway. WEP is a bitch for endusers.
For home users, I give them a choice. I say, "do you want me to setup this feature?" and they say "How much?" (I bill hourly for this). I bet you all can figure how it ends.
WEP is simple to setup for a single NIC to a single WAP. In fact, MAC whitelisting also works well here. But for networks with 3 or more stations, or with NICs of different makes, or with more than one installed OS type, setup, configuration and testing of WEP (or similar encryption) is time consuming. Time is money. Consumers make a consumer decision... probably a GOOD consumer decision. Ask an economist.
I suppose I could work for free. Or I could estimate more time (and money) to begin with and lose out on the business. But I'd rather work than whine about not having enough work.
TANSTAAFL
Couple of years ago when 802.11b was kinda new, i did some testing of this sort of thing.
The fast crack using weak frames worked then. It doesn't work much now, if the boxes are using newer hardware.
The slow crack where you get enough packets to figure out the key worked then and now, but in order to actually do it back then I had to set up some continous traffic to get enough packets to make it work. We're talking millions of packets here, and it just takes forever to see enough to do it, with 112/128 bit WEP.
Can they get in? Sure.
Will they get in? They're going to have to really want in pretty badly or live nearby and be bored enough to capture for a long period of time. And if they just want free network access, they'll find the easier target like the unsecured one down the street. Or pay the 3 bucks at the nearest hotspot for the hours worth of access.
WEP is not secure, but in 99% of cases, it's secure *enough*.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Assume a woman walking down the street shouting she's looking for men to have sex with. Would it be illegal to walk up to her and introduce yourself to the lady, take her into your home and if she still consents have sex with her?
What about this access point that shouts ten times a second:
"Hello strangers! I'm an IEEE802.11 station operating in AP mode! If you want to associate with me, my BSSID is 00:30:40:50:52 and use the ESSID 'default'. I can do 1Mb/s, 2Mb/s, 5.5Mb/s 11Mb/s. I don't do ODFM and I wont accept a short preamble and my owner doesn't want me to use WEP."
What would be illegal about courteously introducing yourself to that access point with:
"Hello 00:30:40:50:52, I'm 02:00:2b:18:fd:03 I want to associate with you with ESSID 'default'"
And what would be wrong with that courtesy being returned with a cheery:
"Welcome aboard, 02:00:2b:18:fd:03. Have fun!"
And once you have been invited inside wouldn't it be proper to ask:
"Is there a DHCP server that would like to give me an ip address?"
And could a polite DHCP server do any wrong by saying:
"Hi I'm the DHCP server serving this subnet. By the power vested in me you're 192.168.1.18, your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, my friend the DNS server is called 204.18.21.17, in case you might want to talk to machines outside my network there is a router called 192.168.1.254 who would be delighted to assist you".
And I wonder would it be wrong to continue the conversation with the following Gentleserver that cheerfully announces his presence every couple of minutes:
"Hi everybody on this subnet! I'm a NT5.1 LANMAN Server at 192.168.1.10 and I'm the Master Browser on this network serving the domain REDMOND!!"
Would it be improper to strike up a conversation along the lines of "Pleased to meet you, 192.168.1.10, Can I connect to a share of yours called C$ with anonymous authentication?"
Which is to say that they at one point were?
The average computer user in 1970 could probably figure out how to turn on WEP, were he/she transported to the present day. This is the same thing that happened with automobiles. In the early days, automobile owners had to be adept at mechanical repairs. If you read "The Grapes of Wrath" , at one point one of the characters is honing the valve seats on his truck in a campground. That was the 30's. By 1960 you'd be hard pressed to find a car owner that could do a valve job on his car. Computers have become a commodity item, just as cars did.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
That's why I have all my gadgets, so I can work outside while smelling those roses :)
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Say I have my WIFI router opened up to the world and that I give free access to the person next door. So long as my personal computer is firewalled why should I care if he piggy backs my WIFI? I've got more than enough bandwith and really couldn't care less.
Anybody not using MAC filtering is asking for trouble. With MAC filtering, you exclude ALL users except for the ones you have previous allowed. By using WEP, MAC filtering and religiously following your router's documentation, you operate your router in "stealth" mode so that you don't even show up on a war driver's unit.
Yes, the instructions vary from makerto maker, but they ALL have the directions you need. All you have to do is follow it.
WEP is not secure, but in 99% of cases, it's secure *enough*.
That within the 1% of cases where it isn't secure enough, the results can be scary. The issue being, you don't know what your WiFi is being jacked for. Sure, it could just be the script kiddy logging in as "god" to play a joke... it could also be a spammer. Or it could could be somebody pulling a credit-card scam. Or it could be somebody that guy that was caught driving around leeching of local WiFi's with his laptop to download kiddie pr0n.
Point is... you not only have to weigh the risks of being cracked, but the risks of what happens when you are cracked.
If you have WEP, then anybody capable of cracking into the WEP is going to be capable of sniffing your MAC and duplicating it using their card. It's not particularly difficult to do or anything.
Now, if you're just trying to keep out the neighbors from accidently connecting to your network, MAC filtering is fine. But it should not be considered a real security measure by any means.
I also see a lot of people thinking that turning off the SSID broadcast actually does something useful. It doesn't, really. The SSID is contained within every single packet that goes over the network, and anybody with a sniffer can find your SSID in seconds, regardless of broadcast being on or not. If you turn off broadcast, what you're really doing is making it harder for people to connect to you accidentally, much like with the MAC filtering. Broadcast SSID's are what things like the Windows XP wireless config screen use to show the "available networks". Turn that off and you won't appear there, but anybody using a sniffer or AirSnort or what have you isn't looking at that screen anyway.
Using 112/128 bit WEP? Leave SSID broadcast on and MAC filtering off, because it makes no real difference. It also makes it easier for other people to connect to your network after you have given them the WEP key and want them to connect. And if somebody is capable of cracking your WEP, then having MAC filtering on and SSID broadcast off won't even slow them down.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Once upon a time someone who wanted to drive really had to know everything about how their car functioned before ever setting foot in it. Now you can just hop in your car and go without giving a second thought to any of it.
Now you can try to spin this such that people back then were safer because they were more "savy" with their cars but I call BS. Cars now are far safer than they were back then. Its all due to the engineering placed in the car. Not only are they more complex placing them out of the comprehension of the Average Joe but they are more reliable, durable, and in general a better driving experience than ancient vehicles.
You shouldn't need to be a super crypto-wireless-hacker guru to use a computer or wireless setup. Engineers should be designing these things to not only be simplier but more robust. Having a better and safer system has nothing to do with the "savy" user and everything to do with the manufacturers.
So? I don't have WEP enabled. WEP is not the be-all and end-all. WEP is crap, and introduces horrible cross-platform issues. Not to mention that vendors can't agree on how to specify it - 40 bit vs 56-bit vs 64-bit vs 128-bit - (hint: some of those refer to the same thing).
I have MAC address restriction enabled on my AP. And it works pretty well. Additionally, unknown clients to my DHCP server do not get an address from it. And there's only a /28 routed on the interface my AP is on.
So yes, it's unsafe in that someone can park outside my house, wait until I log on, sniff my MAC address, set his MAC address to that, and get bandwidth. Except that one of my devices will notice, since duplicate MAC addresses on the same segment can cause problems. Not to mention the reception outside my house is crap, so he'd have to park directly in front of my house, and if I notice the traffic indicators on my switch start going nuts, and look outside and see some nerd with a Pringles can, I can go kick his ass.
And the article is short on details. "40% had the defaults configured". What defaults? Passwords? If so, boo CNN for connecting to other people's APs without permission ("The door was unlocked" is not a valid reason for being in someone's house, no matter how stupid you think the homeowner is). If it's SSIDs, that's totally useless. My network name is "default", because I was feeling uninspired when I got my AP. Doesn't mean it's not secure. A friend of mine still has "linksys" for the same reason, yet he has WEP enabled.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I just asked my brother-in-law, who is computer savvy, why he doesn't have encryption enabled on his home access point.
His answer: "unless some guy decides to enter my property and sit on my front porch with his laptop, my weak signal is all the security I need". He claims he's tested it with several laptops and the signal is too weak to be used beyond 10 feet away from his house.
Technology used to be the domain of technologists.. then it became popular and that's when "Joe Sixpack" got online.
Nothing wrong with Joe Sixpack, per se, he's a good guy but he doesn't know the first thing about his car, except where to put the gas, and he doesn't know the first thing about his computer, except how to surf the net. And the scary part is that he doesn't *want* to know anything more.
When things go wrong, he hasn't the first clue of what to do, with the car or the comptuer. All he knows is that he wanted to surf the net at high speed from his Lay-Z-Boy. Ever since he and his cronies got on board, the technological per capita IQ on the internet plummeted.
There has been a long standing computer security axiom that states: "There is no such thing as absolute anonymity, in real life, or on the web."
Well, now there's a caveat to that axiom that I have coined, that states: "Unless you use someone else's unsecured wireless network."
Joe Sixpack is not only providing the foothold that spammers need to purvey their ilk, but also the perfect foundation from which criminals can perpetrate fraud and theft.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I run an open access point and my neighbor does as well. Anything (and I mean anything) more than computer games and unimportant chat sessions I tunnel through ssh/ssl or something similar.
/. aren't in favor of open access points. They seem to fit very well into the whole 'information should be free' value system that many geeks have.
Why do I leave my access point open then? Because on average I only use maybe 3% of my bandwidth and I don't see any reason that one of my neighbors shouldn't be allowed to use some of it when I don't need it. When I first moved in and didn't have my own broadband yet I was very happy one of my neighbors left his router unsecured.
I'm actually quite suprised that more people on
I went with option (1), and it's a nifty little device (it runs Linux BTW). But its default wireless setup is wide open. It can be configured to cloak the SSID, restrict MAC addresses, and use WEP encryption, but a user who can't figure out how to type a set of four random sixteen-digit hex keys isn't going to be able to set it up securely. (Fortunately, the manual gives some "example" keys; I can't wait to wardrive with those...)
Part of the reason why so many wireless networks are open is because some want to leave it partly open.
For example I don't use WEP because I find it just slows down your connection to nothing, I do agree that use MAC addresses (which I use) should be used, but reality is unless your encrypting everything its much easier to just encrypt the one or two things (say some banking information and that ascii porn, ok just kidding on last part but you get the point)
I think what they're saying is that popularity has grown to the point that the average users of 802.11 are no longer geeks, as Mom and Pop are using it now as well.
It was just badly worded.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
So why is it so bad if my network is not secured? I leave it open on purpose.
One Word: Spammer.
You really want someone from the street to use your open net connection to send 10 gig of spam? It's your bandwith, not mine...
Of course, if you live on the 14th floor, then it's a VERY slim possibility, so you're mostly OK...
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
It is hard to break WEP. Even though attacks are theoretically possible, my experience is that it takes too long to collect enough packets. I let AirSnort run for most of a day. It collected nothing. On a low traffic home network, WEP is quite good.
I really do not know the details of attacking WEP, so maybe there are fast cracking approaches. Writing as someone who uses WEP and casually tried to break WEP, WEP provides a high barrier to network infiltration. A stranger would have to make a lengthy effort to do it.
The other day I got a call from my broker/investment banker. This is unfortunately not a joke. He tells me he got a strange call from some kid at the coffee shop around the corner telling him his wireless network was wide open as well as the hard drive on his machine. Apparently this guy's office is around the corner from a coffee shop and he just plugged in a wireless router and didn't do any configuration to it and everyone at the coffee house has been slurping down their drinks while slurping down his hard drive at the same time.
What pisses me off is that I'm not so stupid as to use wireless, but the integrity of my own personal information is often compromised because of stupid people who may have access to my information and aren't responsible with technology.
This isn't a case of fault or nonfault, but rather a problem with ease-of-use.
/. readership).
A medium-large corporation with a 20 person IT/support staff and lots of PHBs has the time and expertise to implement security policies (even broken ones like WEP are better than nada), but the home user doesn't. What would be incompetent if done by the IT department at Megacorp (tm) is simply "normal" for home users.
If you implement WEP (or whatever) you have a pile of administrative and technical overhead that simply IS NOT PRESENT in unsecured systems. The typical enduser just wants their new wifi printer to work. And if they get a wifi scanner 18 months from now, they just want that to work as well. And if their brother-in-law brings in his wifi PDA, then THAT should just work.
To have a secure system, it must be designed to NOT WORK except under specified conditions. (A password might be a condition) Security then works directly against ease-of-use. The easier it is to use an OS or Network Device or whatever, the less secure it must be.
If the administrative overhead involved in keeping passwords both secure and ready-on-demand isn't annoying to you, then you're probably PHB material.
If the technical aspects of setting up a new device dont bother you, then you are a geek (like the rest of the
If you don't want things just to work, you sure as hell aren't an average user.
TANSTAAFL
I've always found that disabling SSID broadcast is nothing but a false sense of security. It's going to do far more to block legitimate users than to keep out bad guys.
plus-good, double-plus-good
and only have Macs. Why should I care about securing my access point?
I assume you're joking. Mac OSX is famous for having a huge wireless security hole. Any attacker who is on your LAN (airport wireless or ethernet cables, doesn't matter) and has an attack script running when you boot up can OWN your computer.
OS X, by default, looks for a "network configuration distributor" or something when it starts... and then it downloads and installs any patches that computer is providing. The implications are obvious.
Apple has probably patched this one hole by now, but it shows that Macs have no fundamental advantage.