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On The Current State of WiFi Security
An anonymous reader writes "A Flexbeta article covers the basics of WiF security. The article mentions mentions various ways of securing a WiFi network, how easy it is to crack WEP, and what the IEEE is doing about WiFi security. From the article: 'In order to address the security issues of WEP and the current Wi-Fi standards of 802.11a/b/g, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is developing a new standard that is called 802.11i. This standard was developed with security in mind. The new standard implements new security entitled Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which takes advantage of the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), is easier to setup using a pre-shared key, and can use RADIUS authentication.'"
None of which will matter if people do not put passwords on their networks that arent "default" "administrator" or "home." Oh, first post!
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The real contender is WPA2, which employs the far stronger AES symmetric algorithm in place of RC4, and adds much-desired features such as fast roaming:
WPA2 overview.
If your hardware supports it, use WPA2. If not, settle for nothing less than WPA, as WEP is a joke and trivial to break into.
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
Wireless security is a huge issue these days. When I set up my wireless network, I made sure to get equipment capable of working with WPA encryption, and turned the SSID off, etc. From where I am sitting right now, however, I can access 2 of my neighbor's unsecured, unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. And that will always be the problem. We have the capability to secure wirless networks these days with a reasonable degree of security, but people just refuse to do it.
Standard setup for the average home network user seems to be
Take box home
Plug in box
let windows xp do it's thing
Use.
Clearly for these advances to be of any use, customers must be informed of their necessity and setup must be kept as simple as possible (helped, i suprisedly add, by XPSP2's wireless configuration app)
The technology is all well and good, as long as it's being used.
Go ahead and search, you will never find it all, I am baking muffins as I speak. - ComicBook Guy
I read a lot about wi-fi security. However, it keeps coming down to, why should I care? Yes, at work it is important to be very security aware. However, at home, I really don't care if someone is using my connection. If they are doing something that is hogging bandwidth, when I want to use it, I can boot them. My computer is protected and on the other side of a firewall. Information that passes over the router does not touch any storage device. So, back to the question, why should I care? (as a home user)
When my folks go to the car lot, they know to look at the Buicks. When they go to Best Buy, they don't know they're looking at the equivalent of a crotch rocket motorcycle that will surely get them killed.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
doesn't .11g have WPA TKIP
The 802.11g spec does not mandate WPA; however, most modern cards and APs support it. While WPA has no known serious weaknesses, choose WPA2-compatible hardware if you're yet to purchase wireless equipment.
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
As many people are saying, there is no point in advancing encryption standards if the average end user will not use it.
On many sites, you sign up, and get given a random password. How hard would it be for manufacturers to ship AP's with a WPA enabled with a random password/key which is printed on the back of the user manual? (this is a genuine question) XP asks for a password when u try to connect to it automatically, and if you are using linux etc then you know know what the deal is anyway.
According to Bruce Schneier, the security risks if WiFi are vastly exaggerated.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
And I did RTFA.
What's the bottom line for my home network? I've got WPA on my 802.11g network. I changed the default passwords, etc. Is there any realistic chance of being compromised?
Also, as an individual and not a business, what motivation would someone have for doing so?
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While I applaud attempts to secure WiFi, it would seem that wireless will always add another channel of vulnerability to any IT system, especially because WiFi is so often deployed inside the firewall. WiFi system are generally vulnerable to both internet-based attacks and wireless attacks. And even if the 802.11i protocol "secure," there is little guarantee that both the AP and the client wifi transceiver have a secure implementation of the protocol or that the user configures the system in a secure fashion.
As inconvenient as wires are (and even they are not totally secure), they do reduce the amount of one personal information freely broadcast into the ether.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Yes.
Have a look at this
This article is very out of date. While there will never be enough articles out there about how insecure wireless *CAN* be, it seems very out of touch with current technology. For example, 802.11i is being called WPA2..........because there is already a WPA (TKIP+Radius).
It seems like the author used the wayback machine and had it set for 2002 when doing research for this project.
But how do you get the knife away from the shark?
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.
I recently got my first laptop, and did some wifi hardware research. What I wound up buying are products from AirLink101(.com). I got a Super-G card for my laptop, and two Super-G access points. One is set up as an access point, and the other is set up as a bridge (receives the signal from the AP, goes out the cable into my switch, and into my desktop machines with NICs but no wireless cards; I didn't want to have to buy wireless cards for anything but the laptop). These products support WPA with AES, and work quite well through several walls between the AP and the NIC. Two antennas on the AP/bridge units, and they're removable, so one could add better antennas if needed. This is the only wireless AP I know of that can be configured as a bridge - you normally need to buy a more expensive bridge to get bridge functionality. Also note - these are Super-G units, not just G (108Mbps, not 54). They use the Atheros (sp?) chipset, so should be Super-G compatible with anything else using that chipset.
Prices? The AP/bridge units were $70 each at outpost.com. I can't remember how much the laptop card was - $30 or $40 as I recall, very reasonable.
You will be able to find cheaper wifi hardware, but it won't be Super-G, and it won't be this capable.
Build a lightweight VPN server into every router, such as Openvpn which uses TLS/HMAC and RSA keys. The router could easily generate and distribute the keys (over the wire) for wireless encapsulation.
There was a case of a guy downloading child pron in Toronto by driving around at night and finding open WiFi networks (You know the ones.... Their SSID's are Linksys and Default). Apparently when he was caught, he was naked from the waist down looking at explicit images. (Ooh. Bad image)
I point this out as I used to work for a VAR that sold WiFi products to businesses who would just order the products and throw them up onto their network rather than pay us to come in and properly install and secure the environment (which was usually Windows based). When this happened and I pointed it out to them that this could be them (or something worse might happen, such as the cops knocking on your door because they traced the downloads to their net connection), they changed their tune in a hurry and let us secure the networks.
Places like Best Buy should hand this article out to their customers. That would reduce the problem in a hurry.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
So why haven't I improved things?
Simple. Even though I'm a pretty technical Linux user, I've been unable to really feel confident going out and buying 802.11g stuff with WPA, because the existing documentation on the net is pretty bad.
I'm waiting for the mythical "someone else" to set up a nice, straight-forward site that says "here are the cards you can buy at store X which support Linux and don't require binary drivers, patched kernels, and other crap" Sure, there are lists of chipsets, but the actual stores don't list the chipset in particular products often, and the vendors often have multiple versions of the same card with different chipsets.
I think a lot of the problem is the actual hardware industry itself. 802.11b wasn't hard to get Linux support for, but because of the software controlled radio in 802.11g chipsets, it's a bit tricker legally.
And don't get me started on Bluetooth. I got a new phone which has it, and I'd love to buy a little USB Bluetooth dongle so I can play with it, but right now the main Linux Bluetooth page has been asked to take down their list of devices known to work under Linux, because someone in the Bluetooth SIG complained the devices weren't technically qualified. (link) What a load of crap! So instead of getting a dongle which might not work, I'm just not going to get one at all. Everyone loses.
PCMCIA Firewire card is marginally easier, but again, trying to track down and actual card for sale which matches the user-reported specs and models is pretty damn hard. I spent conservatively 3 hours online and in Fry's reading before I got a card which works great until you eject it and panic the kernel.
I guess where I'm going with this rant is that wireless security (in the non-Windows world) would probably be better if the "standards" followed went a bit deeper and were more open to allowing outsiders to confidently buy products. All I'm asking for is a label or a sticker on the box telling me what chipset and version the device uses. It's not hard, and it shouldn't be a secret. Anyone technically savvy to make a purchasing decision based on chipset is technically savvy to figure out what chipset is in a device once they've bought it and spread the word.
Wow... my first rant. Sorry about that....
IPSec SHA256 AH AES128 ESP
We setup such a configuration at DEFCON and despite various attacks against both AP and client, including evil twin, WDS exploits, traffic replay, etc. the network was absolutely impenetrable.
The only secure configuration I would consider would be WPA2 with RADIUS authentication. Pre-shared key is vulnerable to dictionary attacks so be sure to key with a good random string if you use this mode.