Wireless Security Attacks and Defenses

An anonymous reader writes "IT-Observer is running a comprehensive overview of wireless attacks and defenses. From the article: 'Wireless technology can provide numerous benefits in the business world. By deploying wireless networks, customers, partners, and employees are given the freedom of mobility from within and from outside of the organization. This can help businesses to increase productivity and effectiveness, lower costs and increase scalability, improve relationships with business partners, and attract new customers.'"

Comments

The article is 100% wrongheaded

[drinkypoo]

Look at page 3. It's the one where they tell you what you should do to secure your network.

Even with its inherent weaknesses, Wireless Encryption Protocols or WEP is still a good method for preventing attackers from capturing your network traffic. Less-experienced hackers will probably not even attempt to capture data packets from a wireless network that is broadcasting using WEP.

Bullshit. Everything you need to do this can be found on a single Linux LiveCD (Auditor Linux) including the kit for doing replay attacks. Only unmotivated "hackers" will fail to crack WEP.

Score: 0/1

MAC Address Blocking - For smaller, more static networks you can specify which computers should be able access to your wireless access points. Telling the access points which hardware MAC addresses can join the network does this. Although, like WEP, in which this can be bypassed by knowledgeable hackers, it is still a valid method for keeping many intruders at bay.

Bullshit. Again, this will only get people who are unmotivated. MAC spoofing is a triviality. It typically will stop drive-by users of wifi, because they can usually find one that has no "protection" and they can use that. MAC restriction will NOT stop anyone who wants onto your network for any reason other than a minor whim.

Score: 0/2

Ditch the Defaults - Most wireless devices are being sold today with default configurations that are easily exploited. The three main areas to watch out for are the router administration passwords, SSID broadcasting, and the channel used to broadcast the signal.

Using a halfway decent scanner makes ANY settings changes you do (besides turning on WPA) utterly useless.

Score: 0/3

Beacon Intervals [...] These intervals should be maximized to make it more difficult to find the network. The network appears quieter and any passive listening devices are not as productive at gathering and cracking encryption keys.

Again, a good scanner makes this irrelevant.

Score: 0/4

Access Lists - Using MAC ACL's (MAC Address Access List) creates another level of difficulty to hacking a network. A MAC ACL is created and distributed to AP so that only authorized NIC's can connect to the network.

Uh, this is the same thing as "mac address blocking". They're the SAME FEATURE, just one is default accept, and the other is default deny.

Score: 0/5 (I should really assign a negative point for trying to use the same feature as a bullet point twice, but I'll be nice.)

Controlling Reset - Something as simple as controlling the reset function can add a great deal of security and reduce the risk of potential hack to your network. After all the security measures are in place and the proper encryption settings are enforced, the factory built "reset" button available on nearly all wireless routers/AP's can, in an obvious way, wipe out everything.

If someone has physical access to your AP, you're fucked anyway. If they can do remote admin in your AP, you're an idiot anyway - and turning off remote admin isn't even listed as a good idea here.

Score: 0/6

Disable DHCP - Disabling the use of DHCP in a wireless network is again, a simple but effective roadblock to potential hackers.

No, it isn't. A few moments of sniffing will tell you what you need to know. Utterly useless and it just makes your life harder.

Score: 0/7

This article tells you nothing about how to effectively secure your network. In fact, it tells you to do a whole bunch of things that won't work.

Want to secure wifi? There is only one means to do so, and that is to use a tunnel with strong encryption. Whether you're using com

Hardly comprehensive...barely even useful

[sarkeizen]

I maintain a wireless network of over 40 AP's for a college campus. This article spends much time on nothing.

a) 'default' SSIDS are irrelevant. It doesn't make the networks easier to find. It's not like when I ask windows to "View Wireless Networks" it only shows me the ones called "linksys". Perhaps at one time seeing a router called 'linksys' might have made me think that the user is less likely to be running encryption but under XP it tells me right away which ones are encrypted and which aren't.

b) Warchalking - old hat. Perhaps before it was feasable to simply leave my PDA running as I walk around and report all the AP's it sees this might have been useful.

c) WEP - You've got to be joking. The article mentions the 'newer 128-bit specification' doesn't mention DWEP using 802.1x or WPA. Either make it much harder to crack.

d) IDS - Possibly useful but really only once someone is accessing your system via your wireless.

e) MACs - The article seems to vassilate here, on one hand saying that MAC isn't meant for access control and on the other saying that you should use them for ACLs. MAC authentication is useless, it's trival to find a useful MAC address on any network that's used regularly.

f) DHCP - Stupid. Disabling it stops very little for very long. The vast majority of WLANs are using one of the three non-routable IP ranges. It wouldn't take me long to find one that's accessable. It also introduces a serious pain for the maintainers for the network.

What it should mention are the following:

a) Authentication - 802.1x preferably. I personally don't like web portals as it makes it easier to fool users with "evil twin" attacks.

b) WPA2, using WEP or idealy AES.

c) For corporate WLANs use a system that can use your own wireless networks to detect rogue AP's. I'm using Nortel (now cisco) 2270 (with 2230 aps) and I have SNMP traps which warn me when someone in the WLAN starts up an AP.

d) VLANS - keep the WLAN traffic restricted to particular ports, destinations.

e) Have a written policy for your users. Make them understand that adding their own wireless equipment is forbidden.

f) Using some kind of authentication on your ethernet jacks helps - it's hard to find an AP that will do 802.1x on the WAN side. Even so, it would be tied to a particular user. Using the information from (c) you can just disable their account.

f) Invest in a solution that keeps users OS and Virus software up-to-date.