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80% of WiFi Networks are still Insecure, Kismet Author Says
acz writes "The brain and guts driving the development of Kismet is Mike Kershaw alias Dragorn, who works during the day on IBM mainframes and hacks code at night. Kismet is simply the best war driving tool out there plus it's free as in GPL and can even run on your linux PDA. In a recent interview posted on HERT today, he says: 'I've become entirely jaded towards security as a whole (or rather, people's complete lack of it) and not much surprises me when it comes to open wireless networks. ... the overall percentage of unencrypted networks is still at about 80%.'"
I leave an unencrypted access point open in the no-mans-land between my broadband modem and my router, on purpose. I think a lot of people do something like that, or even keep their whole LAN open to the access point, in order to promote free WiFi.
Shouldn't that be "insecure"? How someone could make this mistake in the day and age of internet dictionaries is unpossible to contemplate.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
Go for a drive around town running netstumbler or kismet. I can pick up two hundred access points in 5-10 miles, and the vast majority of them are unprotected... Probably more than 80%. Even more interesting than that is the fact that you can tell which people have actually tried to configure their access points. Many people are using default SSID's and no protection. Kind of scary if you ask me, but hey, it almost guarantees free internet in some neighborhoods.
I know in suburba the number is much higher as opposed to downtown San Francisco.
The key can easily be obtained and with the tools out there it is just as insecure as having the data unencrpted since its easy to fool the AP to giving you the key.
IPSEC is the way to go but my router and older system do not support it.
Linksys supports IPSEC but guess what?
There is a default admin password that anyone can use to log in. SO whats the point?
http://saveie6.com/
When I got my first wi-fi enabled laptop, I decided to wardrive down a busy road in a residential area. I picked up 11 APs along the way, one of which had been secured. The other 10 used the default SSID with no WEP. Whatever befalls the people with the unsecured APs is deserved for not reading the freaking manual. They have the mentality of "I plugged it in and it just works! Whoopee!"
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Ahh... digital extortion. "I secures dis here network, see, or Clamps here breaks into yous guyses computer and steals yur credit card numbers. Capice?"
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Are we supposed to be securing our WiFi networks to stop people using them as SPAMming outlets and entry points to delicate data, or are we supposed to be leaving our WiFi networks open so we can share our connectivity and bring about a utopian world of high speed, anywhere connectivity?
(Yes, yes, I know, the right security for the right place)
Stuart
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
With all of the controversy over who is responsible for downloads off of someones access point I will stay wired just to be safe. I can at least provide some kind of physical security over cat5 runs.
Got hosting
LOL, I went to high school with 'Kersh. I remember how he showed me the first UN*X I've ever seen, mkLinux on his PowerBook 3400. The man is single-handedly responsible for both my affection for Apple and for getting me into Linux. Not to mention that he showed my friends and I 'South Park' long before it was ever on TV (it was '97 or '98 when he showed us jesus-vs-santa).
:-)
Now he's the guy behind kismet, which I use to monitor WiFi at work.
Thanks 'Kersh! I wish you much success with career and hobby, and hope you find a real-life anime chick to settle down with. Send me some tentacle-shots when you do.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Wireless networks have a lower Totacl Cost of 0wnership (TC0) !!!
Can someone answer the following:
* Why aren't WAPs shipped with encryption turned on by default?
* With many well-known strong encryption schemes, why was the weak WEP made standard?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
from the post:
from the article:
An insecure network and an unencrypted network are not the same thing. WEP is encrypted, yet insecure, while secure IMAP and SSH are secure by providing end to end encryption, instead of relying on the network to provide it.
-jim
Of course, that gets you an IP that lets you ping the firewall. More specifically, you can ping the dedicated NIC on the paranoid OpenBSD server that lets through connections to my Squid server (which requires authentication), my mailserver (which requires authentication), my DNS server, and my NTP server.
If getting an IP on my WLAN counts as "insecure", then count my network as bad. However, that's a bit too broad a brush for my tastes. In my setup WEP offers no advantages whatsoever so I never bothered with it, but I guess that makes me just another dumb newbie in their survey.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
A "lot" of people don't do that. The overwhelming majority of people who have WiFi have no idea or comprehension of setting up free WiFi for others when they put it in their home. This is /. so you might not be so out of the oridinary here, but in the general populace such reasons for that config are not statistically significant.
It pisses me off that in order to use Kismac fully, I have to get another wireless card - even though I have Airport Extreme. Just release the specs already - what is the point of keeping them closed source?
I wonder how many unpatched computers are connected to the wired web? Probably an equally scary amount. It seems to me that there are greater long term risks with this scenario. Most spammers and child pornographers unless they are your neighbor or using an antenna are not going to set up shop on your front lawn where as your unprotected wired box can be owned and operated by anyone in the world.
The WiFi data-link layer may not be encrypted in 80% of cases but that doesn't mean that encryption isn't used or enforced at a higher level. You can run VPN, SSL, ssh etc. quite happily over what might appear to be an 'insecure' WiFi link.
As WEP isn't that robust there seems to be little point in deluding oneself - thus many networks will be unencrypted at that layer by design rather than by default.
Tell me how many wireless networks you can associate with and actually use.
In my the middle of Silicon Valley, I can see from my apartment complex about a dozen access points at once, and I can probably 95% of the time access the Internet through at least one. I've given up even paying for Internet access, cause I've always got it anyway. People just plug in their AP's turn them on, and if it works, thats the last time they touch it.
Everyone still seems to think WEP is easy to crack. It's not. On AP's 2+ years old new features have been implemented to dramatically reduce the amount of weak IV's given out. For fun, I tested our network here at work, where we have over 300 employee's and multiple access points. And yes, there are plenty of people actually using the wireless network. In 3 days I was only able to pick up 75 weak IV's in Kismet. You usually need in the range of 10,000+ to make a decent attempt at cracking WEP with current tools. Now, if you have the know how to use tools like wepwedgie, or know how to do packet injection using multiple 802.11b cards/devices with HostAP then you may have better luck. But chances are that if someone knows how to use these tools and has the time to do this, they can probably break your network some other way.
All those talks on network security sometimes bugs me. All those leftist trying as hard as they can to make the right wing extremist's job easy.
The lack of security over WI-FI is a good thing. Ever thought about the democratization of communications, WI-FI can bring you that, unsecure WI-FI WILL bring you that. With file encrytion files are safe (mostly) anyways, that's what we need to promote. Leaving your network open will just make it accessible by other people which, if they get the hardware themselves will make this network availlable to more and more people and so on.
In a few years when you wanna call someone you basically open iChat, MSN messenger, whatever, turn on rendez-vous or equivalent find your contact name and double-click. Get it?
Security isn't always a good thing, making everything locked just make sthe world harder to travel, some doors need to be opened.
In the very unllikely event that I win a huge amount of cash, dream number one is to get several WI-FI routers and configure them to enable a neibourhood network, hoping to change it into a city network and so on. I dream of the day communication will be democratized, free, for everyone.
Instead, as of now, the technology exist, it's there for everyone to grab, but they all stare at it, telling themselves: "too complicated and the router is around 200$CAN, it's expensive, I'd rather pay 30$ a month plus long distance and service fees for the rest of my life"...
I took extra care to lock down my WiFi network, just to be sure that none of the skr1p7 k1dd13s out ther could hacATZ#4#R%F^AA@!@5[CARRIER LOST]
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
even though it's not a poll. My network doesn't work well enough to break into. I can't keep my own boxes connected. I guess the correct words are "incompetent clods" - meaning the people who made my router and my ISP.
Simon's Rock College
Why aren't these articles ever about how great it is that we can all get on the internet practically everywhere? At no point in the whole interview does he talk about the benefits of open wireless, as well as people's abilities to seperate the wired and wireless connections pretty easily to do all their secret things wired, leaving free internet for anyone that wants it?
It IS possible to have an OPEN AP on the same connection as your ENCRYPTED wired environment, and the quick and dirty way costs about 30 bucks for an extra cheap router.
-non serviam-
...water is still wet.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Please check out this.
More specifically, you can ping the dedicated NIC on the paranoid OpenBSD server that lets through connections to my Squid server (which requires authentication), my mailserver (which requires authentication), my DNS server, and my NTP server.
What????
You provide WIDE OPEN completely UNAUTHENTICATED access to NTP and DNS?!?!? Do you have any idea how much damage a serious cracker if enough people take this devil-may-care attitude about network security, and just hand out accurate time information to anyone who asks? Not to mention name service <shudder>.
You, sir, are exactly the sort that is making it possible for malicious script kiddies to ruin the Internet for everyone.
You should be ashamed.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Completely imbelievable.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
What good is whitelisting? people will just sniff the packets to see which MACs are whitelisted, and then spoof that MAC address.
So much for the whitelist.
Many folks seem to launch into the misinterpretation that 'unencrypted' == 'insecure'. It does not. Just because your box can talk at layer 2 or layer 3 on my wireless network doesn't mean it's going to be of any earthly use to you.
Case in point: wander around pretty much anywhere in the Haymarket, Ultimo and Broadway areas at the south end of the City of Sydney, Australia - you'll find literally dozens of open, unencrypted wilress access points, all with SSID "UTS WLAN". Natural next step for a geek is "Whoah! open wlan! I'm there!", fire up laptop, connect...
It's shortly after that that you realise that you've just helped yourself to an open, unencrypted, and completely useless wireless network belonging to the University of Technology, Sydney. You know this because no matter *where* you point your web browser, you always get the same page: "Welcome to UTS WLAN, enter your username/password to continue". If you manage to guess a username/password, then you'll get the same page, with red writing, saying something to the effect of "oops, no IPSEC tunnel, no cigar".
That network is opened, unsecured in that you can get your machine to talk on it without authentication, but you can't talk off of it without additional rights.
Now granted, there's holes in my story. One day, some clever kid is going to figure out that he can use the wlan as his own private routed trunk from one side of the city to the other, and then the owners of the network will have to block that. Second, how hard can it be to get a username/password pair out of a drunk undergraduate? Third, this lot isn't *really* in the spirit of the story - I've built the chinese cookware, I've found, literally, hundreds of wireless nets that really are open for all to see, most of them quite likely unintentionally so.
So yes, there are a lot of unencrypted wireless networks out there, but they're not all unsecured.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
powers my home internet right now. My neighbor of course is oblivious, as long as he gets his pr0n. I am friendly enough to make sure his access point gets its firmware upgrades on time ;-)
It seems to be that simply sniffing for open WAPs is more akin to driving down the street and looking for open doors with little red spinny lights in front and neon signs saying "We're Not Watching! We're Not Watching!".
Actually testing that connection is different; that would be like walking into one of those buildings to see if it's really unguarded. Allowing a WiFi card to perform its designed task of attempting to connect to access points doesn't seem terribly bad, though. I think it's more like smiling at strangers to see who says hello.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In my setup WEP offers no advantages whatsoever so I never bothered with it, but I guess that makes me just another dumb newbie in their survey.
The real problem isn't that people aren't using WEP (since any blackhat with a web browser to download the tools can crack WEP in a few hours at most.)
The REAL problem is that ALL low-cost "wireless gateway" appliances treat wireless nodes as part of the LOCAL network, when, of course, the wireless segment should be treated as another WAN (Internet) link, where the bad guys live, and where you have to authenticate yourself before connecting to the LAN. As long as this remains true, wireless will continue to be a huge security hole in most networks.
Unfortunately, the "business" networking vendors are more than happy with this arrangement, since it keeps savvy business users from buying their network gear at CompUSA or Fry's. The sad fact is that security comes at a very serious cost premium today - it shouldn't, but the factis that companies that value security will pay *much* more for it, so the vendors simply "de-feature" the mass market products to help justify "enterprise" capabilities such as this common-sense approach to wireless networks.
This won't change until one of the SoHo/Home market vendors gets a clue and decides that their buyers might actually like a wireless router that can protect the rest of their network. Why that hasn't happened yet is a mystery.
BTW: If anyone knows of a low-cost wirless router device that *can* treat wireless as an "outside" network, post a reply and let us know...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I have found that if you mix vendor implementations of security--NetGear, Dell's wireless internal card, Linksys cards--they often do not work with encryption enabled. I have tried going up to 128bit, down to 64/40bit, setting NIC restrictions and the like, but in the end, it often is just fruitless with encryption. So, I usually just keep NIC restrictions on. Some hope from the random attacker, but no real protection.
If you want us to use security, make it simple. Make is to that I can type in a phrase for EVERY implementation, and that it generates acceptable keys. I don't want to type in a phrase for one vendor, and then have to hack out what the keys are for another. Then, just make it work. I don't want any one vendors card different than any other. When I use a Base-T cable, it works, regardless of vendor. That's what we want, folks.
...tizzyd
Don't talk about lieing about statistics if you haven't done it yourself.
Obviously, I'm in the minority here at Slashdot, but I've got to say, "So What! Why Should People Secure Their Wireless Network?" Sure corporations should or at least create set-ups where the wireless network is removed from the wired network and of course all that effort to secure the computers, but I've never understood the great push for security on a wireless networks.
For me I'm of the school that you shouldn't depend on your network for security for your computer. This view recently discussed by Jeff Schiller, MIT's Network Manager at Syllabus http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9193. I think he makes some great arguments.
Recently, it seems that people have just jumped on the bandwagon that YOU MUST secure your network, and I guess for the bevy of Windows users out there, with little options for ever successfully securing their computer, this is probably true and one way to get around it. But I find wireless network security to be the antithesis of what wireless connectivity promotes--freedom. So it makes great sense that people would not secure their networks.
Wired Networks by their nature are someone closed off, insuring their security or closing them off further is no big deal. You would expect to have to handle 2, 3, 5, 10 random clients on a wired network. Sure with laptops it happens more, but typically a wired network is somewhat more static in design. You have switches, ports, hubs--it's all very physical. So sure secure it.
But wireless networks promote freedom--you can use your laptop anywhere (anywhere with wireless). But security warps that message. Freedom has always had its limitations, but now the limitation is that someone else owns the air you need to use. What's the point of going to a coffee shop, an administrative building or even sitting on your neighbors porch with your laptop if you still can't get internet access when wireless connectivity is available.
Sure their should be tools to prevent abuse. I don't want someone to start downloading movies off my wireless network, but WHY WOULD SHOULD I CARE if they just use it. I expect the same reciprocity if I'm in the town square or at a coffee shop or just down the street at a friends.
Securing your network has become synonymous with securing your computer and its not. Someone decided that it was impossible to secure their computer, with all the software with bugs and wholes, with various operating systems working against your efforts. So the rallying cry became secure your network.
So fine. Secure your landline, but leave your wireless alone. Sure change the default settings, after all one neighborhood really shouldn't have 50 linksys access points. I'm all for letting people know whose wireless access point they're using. I'd don't want someone taking over my access point, but with various hacking tools, the effort is the same regardless if I've secured my access point.
But if Sue next door wants to use my wireless, go ahead. Don't ask me. Don't make me add you to an exception list or hand over a password. Just use it dammit and be respectful. It's there, and it doesn't really cost me anything more than what I'm currently paying to have you or 20-30 other guest using it.
Encryption, Authentication, and Authorization, and common sense work well enough for keeping the information I need to be secure, relatively secure. I'd rather have someone distracting by the beauty of playing Doom from their front porch using my access point, then banging on my access point try to hack my setup security so they can get free access, when I could have just offered it.
So I say, "Offer It!" Secure what you need secure and open everything else. It makes life easier, and produces good karma as well.
I use WEP on my home WiFi network despite it being a complete pain in the ass. No two vendors want to authenticate the same way so I have to jump through hoops to get a new system on my network. On my Powerbook with its AP Extreme card I have to use xwepgen to generate a hex key to input into the Airport settings. Trying to hook up a Windows system is ten times harder since different cards have different interfaces and not all of them work properly with Windows XP's native configuration.
If it was easier to implement WEP between different vendors' products more people would use it. Unfortunately the product lifetime of WiFi products is a whopping 6 months so drivers and firmwares are rarely updated significantly. If you want to switch from WEP to WPA, which is easier to work with between vendors, you usually have to buy a number of new devices. I'm not apt to plunk down $100+ every year on new WiFi equipment just to get it talking to other equipment. Vendors have no impetus to increase interoperability because they want you buying from a single source.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"How to Lie With Statistics" is the title of an excellent book about it can be done, I should have made that clear.
I'm saying that the author of Kismet is lying. In fact, he makes the effort of saying where he is getting his 80% from, at least.
My point is that the Slashdot post is overly sensational (as usual) quoting the 80% stated in the article, without giving the sample size, which is what the book "How to Lie With Statistics" is about.
My statistics are that 100% of access points have very strong WEP, given that the sample size of that 100% is the 3 access points in my building, which I set up myself. Here's another example:
"90% of all houses are white"*
(*note: all houses within my line of sight, from my apartment, right now)
Now, I'm not trying to be a wiseass. I'm trying to point it out because people see those Slashdot headlines, don't bother to read the article, and think that the world is coming to an end of wireless security. I live in San Francisco, and as of 2 months ago, I only stumbled within about 4 blocks, 2 WAPs that didn't have WEP turned on, out of about 30 or so that my Zaurus (kismet) sniffed out, which is not 80%.
Buy one consumer-grade wireless access point/router, and one consumer-grade router. The combination can be had for under $100.
All local machines go behind the non-wireless router. That router's WAN port is connected to one of the LAN ports of the wireless router, and the wireless router's WAN port goes to the Internet. Now you have the public Internet (unsafe), a wireless purgatory (unsafe in a different way), and a secure LAN (as safe as the non-wireless router/firewall box allows it to be).
Alternately, the non-wireless router can be a wireless router with the wireless features turned off.
Insecurity usually goes further than that. For instance, a friend of mine recently went to a fairly popular local place(name withheld to protect the innocent), and found that the wireless router still had the default password. She didn't do anything particularly nefarious, but a less scrupulous person easily could have.
And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
...while the average citizen = default settings, usually insecure.Sitting in my home in my room with my new college laptop, playing Warcraft FT, it suddenly minimizes, to my amazment, with a dialog window saying "You may connect to the following wireless networks, yadda yadda yadda," and there were four networks, w/ SSID of D-Link, and linksys, w/out WEP, or 802.1x encription. Not even trying to wardrive for networks, four pop up and say, "JOIN ME, JOIN ME!!!!" If I had proper utilities, i could be bouncing off the four servers, and even the above average user probably wouldn't be able to see it.Note: I live in a suburb of Washington DC, so DC must not be tech savvy.
When not job-hunting, I made a modest living helping the local businesses secure their open access points (which expiated some of the guilt over leeching on open WAPs). This led to more business as a tech support consultant, which kept me afloat and paid my motel bills until I found a permanent position.
Using NetStumbler and a DeLorme Earthmate GPS on a laptop, I identified open access points. Then I would approach the business and offer to secure their connection for a modest fee (usually $100). Only two businesses turned me away, but the rest were glad to have my services.
I've read some comments from people who intentionally leave their access points open. While I don't advise this, that's entirely up to you, and I'm sure that you understand the consequences. These small business owners that I worked with were not so aware of the ramifications. They bought a WAP, hooked it up, and were pleased with themselves when it worked. And with two exceptions, they were all horrified that someone 500 feet away from their office or store had access to their network and data.
Some tips if you want to do this:
I wouldn't want to do this full time, but for a few months I made a pretty decent living at this, enough to stay in a nice motel, eat lobster, and drink good scotch. When I was hired by a company that provided contract network administration services I had a nice stack of references (and new business for the firm, something that clinched the deal).
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
and then bills the people who connect, with you acting as admin. Not free WiFi, but takes the idea of providing an open access point and make it managed. http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/netshare.pdf/PDF for light overview
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/
HTML version with some additional detail
http://support.speakeasy.net/cgi-bin/support.cfg/p hp/enduser/std_adp.php?&p_refno=030512-000240#admi n/
FAQ
...some perv with a laptop uses your open connection to distribute kiddie porn. Then the feds will come busting down YOUR door looking for the perp. Try explaining that one to your wife.
An AC telling an AC "I'm so glad you're not my neighbor."
That's cute fellas.
The unofficial
"1. When was the last time someone 0wn3d your TV or VCR?"
Actually, I hope you do realize you've just proven the other guy's point. That computers are such a fragile tool, and for a lot of people they can cause more grief than good, is precisely the _problem_.
What Joe Average wants -- or for that matter what _I_ want -- is something that just does a certain job, with a minimum of fuss. Yes, like a TV or a VCR. If I want to read my email or play a game or whatever, I should just get straight to doing that, instead of having to babysit and secure a piss-poorly made tool.
"2. More complex systems require more complex instructions."
No, it's just a case of letting the idiots run the show. Plain and simple.
Other tools started complicated to use too. Owning a car used to require either being a skilled mechanic yourself, or being rich enough to pretty much hire one full time. Getting an early radio to work, or tune it to a station, was a time-consuming pain in the butt. Etc.
But you know what? Someone in those industries actually cared for the customer. (Or just about the bottom line. Competition is good at that.) Instead of whining about idiot users who can't even learn to use a radio right, they gave you channel presets, auto-scanning for stations, remote controls, and other such.
That's really the only problem with computers today. That instead of asking "how could we make this easier for Joe Average?", we're whining about how Joe is an idot and a luser who can't learn doing things our arcane way.
E.g., if we're talking about wifi, it would be a no-brainer to:
- have a nice wizard interface and walk him through securing the thing.
- make sure that security is enabled by default, and that Joe has to explicitly disable it, if he _really_ wants to run a public "download porn and warez anonymously" service.
- If the device has a default admin username and password, explicitly ask him to change it.
- But what if Joe forgets the password? No problem. Don't fscking have an unchangeable one hardcoded in firmware. Provide an easy way to change it, but which requires physical access to the device. E.g., have to open a lid and press a sunk reset button. After which again, make him change it.
Etc.
See, it didn't even require that much thinking.
But no, instead we'll just whine about how Joe is an idiot luser. Although it's not Joe who's the idiot there.
"3. Adding a wifi router to an existing computer setup is more akin to adding a VCR to an existing TV setup."
I'll direct you to your own point 1: when was the last time someone "0wn3d" your TV after that?
Or if we're talking unneeded complexity, when was the last time you had to become a security expert to add a VCR? Did you have to just know how to generate and share keys on them? And did you need to find that out on your own?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I live in an apartment complex and I got broadband for myself and my roommate. Well eventually i gooked up a wireless router for his laptop and when I plugged in his wireless card there was no less than 20 open connections. So i bought myself a wireless USB adapter and cancelled the ISP.
I like this no security thing
Suppose I want to be helpful to my next-door neighbour and let him share my network connection. If I do so deliberately I am breaking my ISP's terms of service. But if I just leave the wireless router at its default open setting and drop a couple of hints...
Indeed, if you have a wireless network and your outbound Internet link isn't congested, there is not much reason not to share it. You do of course use SSH and other secure protocols for your networking...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com