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New Security Ideas From Intel
Scott writes "Intel is developing a new technology that could prevent unauthorized access to wireless networks using the time it takes for packets to arrive from the access point to the Wi-Fi user. This is one of several ideas were presented at Intel Developer Forum. Intel has also released a hardware-based solution to fight against worm spreading. From the report: 'The system monitors the number of external connections being made and if a higher network activity is detected, the computer is disconnected to prevent the infection of further machines on the network.'"
If you tell the router which port you run your P2P on (e.g. I usually run Azureus on port 6502), then it should be able to distinguish P2P traffic from virus traffic. Besides, virus connections are usually much shorter lived than P2P connections, right?
No, it shuts down if the time it takes for your wireless nic to respond to the wap is greater than a certain threshold, where the threshhold is set in a manner that represents absolute distance from the access point.
This has nothing to do with the actual 'ping time' of data sent using the wireless protocol, rather it has everything to do with the 'ping time' of protocol itself.
Before anyone gets too upset at the idea of their computers getting cut off from the internet for running P2P:
This kind of technology is not interesting to home users, or even for developer workstations: nobody is going to want to use a technology that cuts off their personal computer. The place it looks (IMHO) to be aimed at is ordinary user desktops in large corporations. These are (supposed to be) highly locked-down environment and controlled tightly by the sysadmins. In this environment, the IT manager is going to prefer inconveniencing a few users by cutting their 'net connection than managing a widescale worm outbreak that'll likely take the rest of the network down for everyone.
Horses for courses: home users and developers will still be best served by taking precautions (virus scanners and social countermeasures) and being vigilant for signs of an outbreak.
is only as strong as the weakest link.. which in most cases is the user.
Not all worms requires the user's involvment (cf zotob).