Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Security Ideas From Intel

Posted by Zonk on from the making-you-safer-at-home dept.

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.'"

3 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Say Goodbye by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 3, Interesting
    '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.

    Say goodbye to P2P and BT.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  2. I wonder which new technology by springbox · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Intel is developing a new technology that could prevent unauthorized access to wireless networks

    Could it be..

    • Setting the router defaults to be more secure
    • Printing out how to run the setup utility included with the router to secure your network on a big bright yellow card
    • Forcing the user to pay attention to the settings by setting the WPA key to a random default
    • Printing, in big letters somewhere on the inside of the box, explaining how if the user runs yet another inescure 802.11b network, the terrorists have already won
    </sarcasm>

    It seems like Intel might be searching for an automatic solution for this problem, which is bound to fail as quickly as they can put it out in the wild. How do you protect users from bad network setups if the users largely aren't aware that the problem exists? We don't need new technology, we need to modify existing technology that, while it might add a few extra steps, forces users to pay attention to the problem that everyone here is already aware of.

  3. Time for Clarke's Corollary? by volsung · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Any sufficiently advanced worm will be indistinguishable from normal user traffic.

    (OK, so it has nothing to do with Clarke's Law, other than sharing the same sentence pattern.)