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KisMAC Developer Discontinues Project
mgv writes to let us know that the lead developer of KisMAC, a passive wireless network discovery tool for Mac OS X, is discontinuing the project. Michael Rossberg lives in Germany and that country has recently passed laws that would make his participation dangerous. He urges visitors to take a copy of KisMAC and its source as long as the site is up, so that development might be continued outside the US or EU. From the website: "There has not been a lot of time for KisMAC lately. However the motivation for this drastic step [lies] somewhere different. German laws change and are being adapted for 'better' protection against something politicians obviously do not understand. It will become illegal to develop, use or even posses KisMAC in this banana republic [i.e., Germany]."
Hmm, couldn't he contribute anonymously somehow? Login via an encrypted protocol and send code under a "pen name" of sorts?
... Kismac doesn't break into Apples, it lets Apples passively monitor networks and has some basic attack functionality integrated. Your post might be [vaguely] on topic if this was a discussion about an Apple firewall, but for a passive wireless network stumbler? I don't think so...
So what does it take to be a "professional"?
No matter what kind of bullshit laws get put into place to restrict 'cracking tools' - criminals will have them. Legally sticking your head in the sand will not make you any safer. Far better that tools like this are spread far and wide so that countermeasures, or at least recognition of the problems, are also spread far and wide.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
50$ in the right person's pocket.
Great Intellect...
Because of its vagueness, this yet to be commenced, but already passed law is a severe threat to the German security community! Experts of different interest groups have repeatedly expressed their serious concerns, but the politicans - naturally knowing better than any expert can - decided otherwise. For more information, please visit: http://www.phenoelit.de/202/202.html
Can he not have a server setup outside Germany and remotely access it and keep the development going on? Simple Example: VNC The development will be outside Germany, in a way. Or, he can break KisMAC into different components, components which are viewed as 'harmless' by the GOV, unless when they get together.
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
Because if you put the book at the back of the shelf no one will ever find it?
Well, I have used it a bit, and I'm no professional. But having shown people how quickly their encryption fails is a good thing.
At the end of the day, your comment is one of security through obscurity.
Kismac doesn't hack the unhackable, it can however open up access points that are much less secure than their owners think, mostly due to failures by the vendors to use proper algorithms. Why this should bother you is unclear to me.
At the end of the day, the vendors are more likely to change their hardware if this sort of tool is widely available. If it was kept obscure, most hardware vendors would never patch their access points.
I've used it alot, but never actually hacked into anyone's computer by using it.
Its likely to be forked anyway and exist on in another country...
Michael (as the original poster of the article).
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Quick, someone use svnsync to download the subversion history of the project!
Free speech is fine but I don't agree with having this tool available to non-professionals in a nice easily installed package.
...... righfully entitled to. No, wait. Rights are NOT a privilege, gift, or anything that should be revoked.
This statement urks me. So what should we do? Restrict free speech just a little so professionals get the easily installed package? Have someone complete a course and afford them the title of professional?
Of course, if we restrict free speech for this cause, whats to stop it from be restricted for other purposes? Locksmith tools to help people get in their cars and houses?
Tell me, what is the limit?
Personally, I believe there should not be any limit. Its black or white, all or nothing!! Once it becomes grey, its open to interpertation. Interpertation is BAD! This is what allowed the government to take property for "public purposes" (owned by a private corporation of course). Also, peaceful protesting is fine and legal, when the government can decide to regulate the location and timeframe (at night from 10:00 to 10:01 ONLY around a dark alley where no one would see them).
There you go, your gut feeling could send us spiraling down a loss of (more) rights we should be
"Is there even a legitimate use for that?"
Under German law, now, even nmap could be considered evil. Tools like this and kismac are mostly used to see if your pants are around your ankles with regards to your network, either home or commercial.
Why should people with home networks not have this tool available? The German law is stupid and makes everyone a victim while not taking the tools out of the hands of people who will use them anyway for nefarious purposes.
I can kill people with a hammer, or I can use it to build things. I choose the latter. Should we outlaw hammers because some people illegaly misuse them?
--
BMO
"Free speech is fine but I don't agree with having this tool available to non-professionals in a nice easily installed package."
Apart from the fact that what you self-contradict yourself (if free speech is fine then you can just "free speech" a script that installs any program "nice/easily" and that should be fine too) I should point out that fortunately (in my opinion) it doesn't matter if you agree or not. Well, unless you live in the only countries I know where "cracking tools" are banned: North Korea, China and Germany but then you might have other problems than easy access to cracking software. There are many things some people don't like other people to do but that's perfectly fine it they live it at that (it's NOT fine if they want for example to kill all people working in certain days of the week like some -popular I might add- religion wants).
As there are two Michael's posting here, I'm just guessing you aren't referring to me...
Its based on kismet. It has the usual aqua gui-ness about it, but remains a pretty powerful tool. One of the most impressive finds on a mac, and part of why I was so impressed when I switched to apple. *nix power combined with a user interface that was just too easy.
And I think that every thing that this german law does for KisMAC, must surely apply to kismet also...
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Though KisMAC is still out there, there are alternatives such as Airsnort, Airattack, WepLab, Web,.. Can a live CD such as this one http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1814#auditor be booted off a macintelatosh?
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
What bothers me (i've never heard about this software before) is the trend for western countries to move away from individual freedom. I live in Australia, it is happening here - the doctor that was held without charge for 3 weeks. I know it's happening in the US, but now it seems to be happening in other western countries too. Are there any western countries whose citizens aren't losing their individual freedoms?
At least we are having an inquiry into the matter. How is it in other countries?
Free speech is fine but I don't agree with having this tool available to non-professionals in a nice easily installed package.
You're entitled to your opinion. As stupid as it is, you have the right to hold it. Allegedly, Lenin had a name for people like you.
NTITE
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
No matter what kind of bullshit laws get put into place to restrict 'cracking tools'
It's not to restrict the tools, it's just so they have more things to accuse you of when you're charged to get something to stick.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Also, nice sig. Isn't that a Schneier quote? I could've sworn I've seen it before... and it's been a while since I read Applied Crytography.
Peace sells, but who's buying?
Hey don't be so hard on the parent, maybe he just talks like Wallace.
It's a cracking tool! More cheese Grommet!
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Good! Now we can be sure that crackers will never have this, and that only professionals will.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
cool, just what every community needs - more ways to have charges stick when the government takes a dislike to you! assholes.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
To take an extreme position, I do not believe it would be a good idea for the wireless network configuration dialog in gnome to have a text field for the key and right beside it, a button to use network traffic to obtain the key.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Brings to mind the riots in Sydney about a year ago. A sporting goods shop almost sold out of baseball bats in a couple of hours. The manager called the police to ask for a suggested course of action. The cops suggested the store stop selling baseball bats for the time being.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Darn submit button! noticed that myself afterwards. I'm aware that on the older Macbooks (pre 2007) it works fine. But Apple has changed the chipset recently to Atheros and all kinds of problems have crept up, airport dropping connection and so on. It's understandable that KisMAC doesn't support it because its completely different chipset and they haven't updated KisMAC's hardware support after 2006.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I think the parent makes a good point.
What are the linux/windows alternatives to this 'product' anyways?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Of course not. Done properly, it would automatically fill the key in for you.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Kismet.
I think he talk about the license let someone get the "expert" title. Like the Exam Fee of MCSE: http://www.whizlabs.com/mcse-exam/70-290.html
a family of lawyers, I'd caution anyone tempted to think of this as an Us Vs. Them scenario. This kind of shit happens everywhere, and it's really only by having the protection of the guns of any particular country that you gain any measure of freedom past the average level that the man on the street considers the lowest possible. It sucks, but this is the reality of the situation. You've only got as much freedom as isn't either explicitly protected, or passed by when politicians make their rounds in "protecting" you against harming yourself.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Open-source should buy and island and form a new "country". Call it Stallmanland? Stalland? Nah. Needs work.
Table-ized A.I.
That is a difficult one. Whilst I think that the problem there is the person, not the bat, sometimes it is worth restricting some actions. I think that even the most pro gun supporter would say there is a limit on selling weapons. Its just where you want to draw the line. Baseball bats, knives, guns, semi-automatics, hand grenades, small tactical nukes? Somewhere along the line most people will agree its not a good idea to have these things for sale in the sports section of k-mart, irrespective of the individual's personal freedom. Most peoples rights to freedom should stop somewhere short of their right to kill them selves with a 10 megaton nuke in a densely populated city.
Now this is a little different from what KisMAC is about, however. Kismac is fairly useless if you have a good password and a network secured by a proper protocol. On networks that aren't properly secured, it can open them up with various amounts of grunt work, ranging from minutes to days.
Mostly, KisMAC helps secure the network by letting you attack your own network. It has very little to do with most current criminal activity online.
Criminalising this tool will not make people much safer, if at all. Arguably it makes things more secure - I've persuaded a number of people to change their encryption to WPA by demonstrating how quickly their base stations can be compromised.
Much better I do it than someone else.
I think the German authorities would be much better working on philshing attacks, scam emails, and so on.
Of course, that would require some real work, not like this...
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Rioters were buying baseball bats? Sounds like a lame riot to me.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Kismet showed some family members why they needed both wireless encryption and MAC filtering. Telling them I was going to log every IM conversation, and then showing them the logs went a ways towards convincing them that their wireless was not really all that secure. They now know that MAC filtering only keeps out the honest, and WEP only hides their data with a thin layer of gauze, but at least it is their informed choice now.
Kismet and other wireless scanners have helped me pick out channels for my router based on where they have the least interference. I blame a cranky windows 'wireless assist tool' for picking the strongest AP instead of the one I select, but since it was what I was dealing with I just made the best out of it.
And yes, wireless scanners have also found me open hotspots to connect to when I am traveling. If the coffee shop leaves it on after hours, how am I supposed to ask for permission anyways?
I know of a company near to where I work who do it as a business for large organisations. They'll be brought in to test network security and use all sorts of tools, including the simple ones like nmap and port scanning.
If you want to check that your network is safe in a similar way but don't have several thousand to burn, what's wrong with checking?
This is another one of those "will limit the rights of law abiding citizens while the criminals continue to ignore it (because they're criminal)" laws.
Like the Exam Fee of MCSE: http://www.whizlabs.com/mcse-exam/70-290.html MCSE, huh? My statement still stands.
Yes, but a politician can understand a hammer. It's heavy, blunt and simple on the whole (no comments on similarity ;) ) where as this new-fangled intarwebs-net-tubes and its associated applications must be dangerous in some way, otherwise children wouldn't be using it.
Or something like that.
You ought to file that as a feature request for both GNOME and KDE.
(Seriously, why not? It's not as if networks using weak encryption would have actually been secure anyway; this just provides better usability!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Quote: "German laws change and are being adapted for 'better' protection against something politicians obviously do not understand. It will become illegal to develop, use, or even possess KisMAC in this banana republic [i.e., Germany]."
It's amazing when someone calls his own country a "banana republic".
Managers who were older than 20 when the personal computer revolution began have seldom bothered to learn about the new technology. I guess we will just have to wait until the old dinosaurs retire.
Sounds more like a Canadian riot, doesn't it?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I suppose by your logic you see Iraq as an example of a success, then? A well armed populace sorting out their own problems and fighting off foreign forces, different groups attempting to "retake power"? I assume you defend the rights of the Iraqi people to own their own weapons?
Seems like a bit of a mess out there to me and that things would be better sorted out by unarmed people talking their way through their problems rather than shooting their way through them. You may remember that revolutions have also happened peacefully (e.g. former Soviet republics).
I think Iraq is a fine example of what happens when a heavily armed populace try to sort out their own problems.
"Why would you need that unless you are going to kill someone?" they said.
"To protect myself from others who have them" I said.
"Then why don't they make them illegal?" they said. Not trying to start an endless gun argument here, but that analogy is flawed. You wouldn't be able to accidentially kill or hurt someone with this piece of software. And while you'd want to keep the program out of your kids' reach (as soon as they're computer literate enough to use it), if they did manage to get their hands on it, they couldn't endanger themselves and others by playing with it the same way they could if they found a gun.
No matter what you think about gun ownership, the potential consequences of gun abuse are far greater than those of misusing a program like this one, so there's no inherent reason both should be treated equally by law.
Sirs,
Eventually you are missing the point. KisMac is a tool that can discover APs and Point to Point wireless network, Crack WEP, Crack WAP (given a dictionary) and make Injection Attacks with selected hardware (prism cards mostly). So it's just not a purely listening software neither limited to only apple basestations (Airport).
So long the problem is that Germany choose to make illegal tampering with telecomunications, which could be good, but eventually forgot to leave a exception of fair use for research pourposes which is not good.
Enrico
ie, this law isn't going to prevent anyone with malicious intent from having and using a program like KisMac, but it will prevent people from using KisMac as a tool to learn and test their own network security.
Regardless of grandparent's opinion on guns, that is one similar argument that can be made.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I am a professional. Part of my job is to ensure security on our systems.
I appreciate having a nice easily installed package because if I'm looking to test a particular aspect of the network for security, I'm not looking to spend 15 hours getting the tool working in the first place. Alternatively you could provide the nice easily installed package commercially - for a fee - but then you're assuming that those with criminal intent have neither money nor means of pirating. Both of which are patently untrue.
This does not exactly require an IQ in excess of 150 to figure out.
Therefore, I can only assume that you, Sir, are either an idiot or a troll. Which is it?
Make everybody a criminal in theory, so it's easier is to suppress the general population.
Except that it works. Taking away the guns results in tremendously fewer gun deaths. There are approximately 150 gun deaths per year in Canada. That's right, one hundred and fifty; that number before the laws were enacted was ten times higher. There are 12,000 gun homicides per year in the US (roughly 100 times as many with just ten times the population).
Seems to me that's a fairly strong case. Gun control didn't take away everyone's guns (you can still have hunting/recreational weapons and you can get handgun licenses); it certainly didn't affect those in military, law enforcement, and other legitimate security-related fields. Same principle here. If you've got a legitimate use for the software and you've used it consistent with that, there's no reason this law would get in your way. What seems more likely is that this is a sensationalized pot-stirrer reacting strongly to a crowd of excitable Slashdotters via an over-cautious bit of speculation by one developer absent any legal advice.
Wait for the "fork". The code will be moved to another site, and I suspect that development will continue on.
No need to reinvent the wheel...
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is a debate of sorts (i.e. politicians do the talking) currently about german secret police and their right to spy on you in any way it sees fit - by breaking into you private computers too. Could this be a coincidence? Maybe the guy refused to talk to them and they let him know he is next to be thoroughly investigated for possible law violations. Incidentaly abbreviation of state's name can be transalted as Banana Republik Deutschland. It fits quite well actually.
The locked door analogy just doesn't cut it. Think of the coffee shop having a robot butler that they forget to program correctly. It serves at all hours instead of just working hours. Who's fault would that be? Now, take your archaic straw man and get lost.
Note: I did not suggest or imply that I decoded their WEP key to get an internet connection.
To bring in the car analogy, this seems more like making cars and alcohol illegal instead of the act of drunk driving..
Of course driving and drinking everyone knows, so making them illegal would never even come into question.
Well, that particular example was some time ago, but I believe it was AIM. I think that was back between '00 and '03 but if I tried to narrow it down someone would probably point out that I couldn't have used Kismet since it was only release last month or something.
If they leave their TV on after-hours, it's okay to stand in front of the store and watch it (and if I have a universal remote, maybe even changing the channel), isn't it? Unlike your cappuccino case, no entry is needed. When you look for an analogy, choose a correct one ;-) In both my example and the hotspot's there is no automatic extra cost for the store.
The irony of the situation is that the German government actively sponsors work on security tools such as GPG, OpenVAS, BOSS.
Tim Brown
No, actually, it does work on the new macbook's - you just have to compile KisMAC from sources on your specific "macbook that won't run kismac".
Don't ask me why it works, I have no idea, but works it does - and I'm running the mid 2007 macbook model here.
Sapere aude!
MSN does not encrypt messages being transmitted at all, which I really hate, given it's popularity amongst friends of mine.
if someone wants to believe that their weak encryption grants them security, the rest of the world is under no obligation to make their belief a reality. weak encryption is weak encryption. the sooner people stop using it the better.
TIAEAE!
That was the most insightful comment I've seen in a long time (REALLY!).
If a government wants you in jail they don't need stuff like anti-terrorism laws to do it. All they have to do pick some obscure small local, state, federal statute, search your house and arrest you.
What? Look at that copy of Michael Jackson on tape! Please produce the original AND the receipt. Don't have it? Well that's 5 years in jail and $50,0000 per copy!
Now there is a little exaggeration going on above (just a little) but democracies have so many laws on the books now that are not prosecuted that a prosecutor could pick whatever they want. As long as it's not a public trial chances are they could get away with it.
20 bucks, same as downtown
Cart
Part of being a good manager is that you directly manage only stuff you understand.
So if the owner of the company you work for has hired a competent CIO and lets him do his job, that is perfectly OK. In my experience, those who are halfway tech-savvy and start micromanaging things cause a lot more problems.
C - the footgun of programming languages
You're arguing against something I didn't argue.
I was only pointing out that there was similarity between the arguments. I didn't mention whether I supported the argument as it pertains to guns. But in the case of KisMac, it's a valid argument. Outlawing KisMac and programs like it just isn't going to stop the people trying to break into your network.
Acquiring a gun is one thing. Downloading or copying a computer program from one of the billions of computers in the world, on the other hand, is a different, much simpler thing.
Why should people with home networks not have this tool available? The German law is stupid and makes everyone a victim while not taking the tools out of the hands of people who will use them anyway for nefarious purposes.
You're right. The law is stupid, as stupid as the politicians are that created it. This must be the first stupid law that has been passed.
NOT! Bro, take a look around - UK has a dense net of cameras all over, not too sure about their laws. US passed totally intolerable laws after 9/11 that even US courts decided later on were unconstitutional. European parliament passed a law requiring storage of communication information for anywhere between 6 months and 2 years, without the slightest evidence of the people breaking any law. There are discussions of allowing the nick-named "Federal Trojan" to be used to secretly invade and scan computers for proof of crimes, without requiring court orders. Plus several other laws in discussion that severely cut into the rights of free citizens. The most outrageous fact: Once they found out that what they were suggesting was against the german constitution, the next thing the said was that the constitution would have to be altered. Great. The bad thing is: Both German majority parties are in this together. So unless half of the German citizens start to vote for minorities, there's no real legal way of stopping this junk.
And when he gets caught he goes to prison. All that risk over some, while nice, not earthshaking/freedom supporting software?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Umm, all of the most-used ones? AFAIK, Google Talk is the only one of the popular networks that does it, and that's because it's based on XMPP (Jabber).
Yahoo, MSN, AIM/ICQ, none of them have encryption. Whenever I find someone using Pidgin/Gaim I can convince them to install a plugin like gaim-encryption, but my buddies who use the official clients are sitting ducks (and me along with them).
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Check out http://www.istumbler.net/
this is a Mac port of Kismet. If you're interested in security issues you might want to subscribe to Pauldotcom's security weekly podcast - that's how I learn about most of this stuff.
Clear, Dark Skies
How about Gnufoundland?
How's it going there Mick?
A hammer isn't really a very good analogy. "Killing" and "Building" are different activities. With KisMac the issue is performing the same activity with different intent.
A better example might be a gun. I can use a gun to murder people, or I can use it to kill in self defense. Unfortunately this doesn't really support the argument as well...
From the project FAQ:
The source code is only available with subversion, a CVS replacement.I was going to download it (as a gesture; my only Mac runs Linux) but no way I'm going to install SVN just for that! Odd decision, not even providing weekly builds ...
You're wrong: rights are a privilege, not a right.
KisMAC is not being discontinued, it is only being moved to servers outside of Germany.
You've been listening to Alberto Gonzales talk about the Constitution again, haven't you?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
KisMac is more like a key. I can use it to unlock my own door, and, with any luck, it will also unlock my neighbour's door. Because it can potentially be used to unlock my neighbour's door, it is imperative that we criminalize all possession of keys, regardless of intent.
FYI: KisMAC doesn't work in passive mode in the latest ibooks with Atheros AR5008 chipset.
You mean Macbook; I know, stupid term, but "iBook" means a completely different platform, albeit in the same market segment. And it doesn't work in any INTEL Macs; it looks like it works, acts like it works- finds some networks- but nothing beyond broadcast SSID frames are recorded, except for a very limited number of people who probably have one specific revision. You're best off with a PPC system.
Frankly, the guy / the team wasn't getting anything done; this is just a formal announcement for what's been going on for more than a year. The application has seen no UI refinement in 2+ years, there is very little proper documentation, nobody's doing a good job of actually tracking what hardware does/doesn't work, the changelogs aren't maintained, and there's been very little progress on the most important front: support of built-in Apple hardware. Kismet now has more support for said hardware than KisMac does.
This is a complete cop-out. It's been on the brink of abandonware practically since it started.
Please help metamoderate.
No. From iStumbler's FAQ:
KisMAC puts a wireless card in monitor mode to discover private networks. iStumbler only finds networks you are currently connected to and networks that announce their presence. It is not a sufficient replacement for KisMAC.
I don't buy this analogy, partly because trying your key randomly in order doors isn't going to work (ok there are certain flawed implementations but..) and secondly because it's not the use the tool was designed for. If anything you could say it's like a lock pick. You can use it to test how easy it is to break in to your house or you could use it to break in to someone else's house. Again, the problem is that people might be inclined to agree that lock picks should only be made available to licensed professionals. Don't get me wrong, I think both Kismac and lockpicks are fine. But I'm not sure society in general would agree with me.
Yup, to the best of my knowledge, AIM is unencrypted. Even the password is only "roasted" before being transmitted, which can easily be reversed. It's quite horrifically insecure, but for most useless conversations, it's just fine (the same way the public phone network is insecure). People have made various client addons for securing AIM, but very few pairs of people both use them. The only major protocol I know of that is secure is Jabber / Google Talk, which can connect via SSL.
Yeah, if you outlaw drugs only outlaws will have drugs.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I think that's against some unwritten rule. I mean, what would happen if there was a riot and a hockey game broke out?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I use a VMWare Fusion (you could use Parallels too, of course) virtual machine running Ubuntu Linux with AirCrack-NG. It's a bit of a pain to set up, like anything Linux driver-related always is, but there are two big advantages over KisMAC. First, the cracking algorithms in AirCrack-NG are much better, having been updated more recently. You only need one tenth as many IVs to crack a network, making it practical in a short time basically wherever you are. Second, driver support, particularly for injection is much better. For instance, KisMAC has been hinting at injection support for Ralink USB devices for almost a year now, while it's already available in AirCrack-NG on Linux.
One of the things that I use KisMAC for is to see which channel range has the least amount congestion, especially since you can get a lot of WiFi networks on the same channel when people just use the router defaults. I live in a very dense area and I find I can really improve my network performance greatly by optimizing my channel. I have helped a number of friends and family optimize their WiFi networks this way. Now it sounds like something basic like this could be illegal in Germany! That's pretty messed up.
it was probably the easiest to use tool of its type, and all of the mac users that I knew that were interested in security used it. It really sucks that the main developer is going to be pushed off the project.
For those who haven't used it, it is significantly better than kismet for linux. It brings together kismet, and a number of other open source tools for wep cracking and integrates them into a easy to use UI. It is pretty trivial (point and click) to break a wep network with kismac. I've tried the same with the linux tool chain, and it is a pain in the ass in comparison.
I hope that someone else restarts development on this project. It really is a valuable tool that would be a shame to lose.
I have a macbook on which I cannot connect at all to a WAP which an iMac next to it uses all the time. Even right next to the WAP it would report unexpected errors. I spent a while trying to diagnose the problem (including installing kisMac, and finding it didn't work at all on the macbook) before giving up and buying a cheap 802.11g + ethernet switch, which I can connect to from a phoenominal range on the macbook.
As a bonus, I'm now using WPA2 security, though I don't know how secure it really is thanks to the lack of working tools like kisMac.
fair enough, I think the analogy still holds.
Not at all. You said outlawing guns isn't going to stop people from shooting you. The evidence points to the contrary. Outlawing this would undoubtedly cut down on people breaking into networks.
What it's not going to stop are people determined to get what's on your network, so the gun argument is specious. Gun control laws are designed to cut back on "non-professional" or impulse-based murders. There's no illusion that an assassin or someone who has made the premeditated decision and plan to kill someone would be stopped by those laws. But the number of those deaths is quite small. The number of "professional" hackers is also small compared to the "hobbyists" and script kiddies who cause trouble because of the availability of tools to do so. They're neither smart nor determined enough to break in on their own.
I'm not saying this is an effective law to pass or that I support it. But the gun analogy is horribly wrong because a) it's not the same aim, and b) gun control laws DO stop people from gun homicides. Nine times out of ten, in fact, based on Canada's experience. That's a pretty effective and reasonable law.
horribly accurate
In both my example and the hotspot's there is no automatic extra cost for the store.
:)
Unless, of course, they have tiered pricing based upon bandwidth used. Or, to extend your analogy, it may be possible that those other channels are pay-per-view
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Bullshit.
You're either confusing what I said with something another poster said, or you're deliberately lying in order to karma-whore.
I never said a damn thing about whether the argument applies equally-well to guns and KisMac. I simply pointed out that the argument which is made for guns is similar to the argument used in this situation.
And if anyone wants to verify that, here are the links to my previous posts in this thread:
My original post
My second post
Gun control laws DO prevent most people from having guns. They do NOT prevent people with legitimate uses for guns from having them. This law does NOT prevent tools like KisMac from being used by professionals or those who otherwise have permission. It DOES keep it out of the hands of punk kids and armchair/lazy hackers who cause nothing but trouble but aren't skilled or interested enough to hack it (pardon the pun) on their own.
The argument is just plain wrong on both sides. You're trying to use a decidedly flawed argument from the gun context in support of your views (or in defense of the OP's views) on the KisMac issue. That simply doesn't work.
Funny how all of your posts are modded to +2 seemingly the second they're made, isn't it?
My mistake there. I thought I had that off, and even launched another browser where I wasn't logged in in order to verify.
I screwed up.
But so did you in your accusation. I never said anything about how I felt in regard to how the argument relates to guns.
The SIM card in question was found in his cousin's house."
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Notice, though, that the police didn't order him to stop selling baseball bats. Their suggestion was basically that, if the shopkeeper felt the bats were destined for use on heads rather than baseballs, he should probably stop selling them - something I'm sure the shopkeeper had already worked out for himself, and was just looking for a little reassurance of (while giving a heads-up, as it were, to the police).
Besides, I'd rather a cricket bat. A couple of inches shorter, yeah, but about 40% heaver - and it has both a flat and a sharp side, so you have a choice between stopping power or pure damage. And, if all else fails, you can play cricket with it...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Why set it in a physical space? The Cyberspace was already declared independent. Run the development via hidden servers accessible via Tor or other suitable technology. A combination of cloaking and redundancy may buy us all few more years of relative freedom.
Europeans and Americans complain about such trivialities. Come live in a real banana republic for a year (and not in a high security, paid-for-in-Forex complex either - rather live just like a local middle-class citizen).
(And no, this is not to denigrate the concern about the gradual slide towards a global police state.)
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Where, exactly, is the rationalization? If you, for what ever reason, left a computer on the front porch with a sign saying 'free internet access' then you would be completely insane to expect people not to use it. Now then, where exactly is this different from a shop leaving an open AP available 24/7?
Now, if you think I was rationalizing that 'my computer just connected, it's not my fault,' then you are still completely off base. Call me a geek, but 802.11 has tons of ways to both turn off advertising an open network and protecting it. If a business leaves the lights on and doors open with a sign saying 'take a brochure or leave a note' then I doubt they would mind if I did exactly that. If I had gone in and messed with the router settings, after cloning a MAC address and hacking the WEP key, then you might have a point. Otherwise, you are just looking for a reason to suggest that the technology should protect you, instead of taking responsibility for the technology you use.
...they can kis m ac!!!
(Seriously: banning tools instead of banning people will only make the problem worse. Just because computers can calculate missile trajectories, they are not tools of terrorism. This logic will drive us nowhere as humanity.)
If your wireless card is claiming that its address is a broadcast address, then it is misconfigured or broken.
Do you care about gun deaths, or total deaths? Because in Britian, they have a knife culture and are planning to crack down on belt crime. I couldn't make this shit up.
Gun control laws DO prevent most people from having guns. They do NOT prevent people with legitimate uses for guns from having them.
What, then, constitutes legitimate uses in your opinion?
If you want to argue guns, I'll argue guns. If you want to argue software, I'll argue software. But if you want to argue guns, I'll probably win.
Stop trying to derail this discussion, please. I'm doing enough to do so on my own.
I don't agree with having this tool available to non-professionals in a nice easily installed package.
However, if it came in a terribly complicated to install package, available only to professionals, it would be okay for you?
I don't need a signature.
The tiered pricing is a possible problem, I will agree. Then again, I doubt they would have a contract of this kind: as enterprises they want to have predictable costs, so they would most certainly buy flat-rate Internet access. Oh, and it's the first time I know of a pay-per-view channel being accessible by using the remote on the TV box (you don't mean you would play around with the TV provider's box, do you?).