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Sniffing the Wireless Traffic of MIT Students
An anonymous reader writes "Someone got permission to sniff the wireless traffic during an MIT class. The professor: none other than Robert Morris, creator of the first Internet worm! The lecture: computer security! I love it."
Highest number of packets: MDNS (Multicast-DNS, Zeroconf) with a whopping 30% of all packets. Because computer Barbie says: Configuration is hard.
I haven't been to university for 9 years, but are students really using laptops during class???
Laptops, netbooks, smart phones, tablets... Yup.
In theory they're typing notes or recording the lecture or something.
In practice, I suspect it is more of a distraction than anything else.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
In my class 2 years ago, it was pretty much mandatory. Prof would be walking you through a PHP script for logging onto the server. If you weren't following along, you were considered not learning the skill.
In this way, the prof could look around at everyones laptop. He'd be able to see how people coded differently, and give suggestions on how to either improve their style, or what languages they'd be most comfortable in, what editor they might like, etc etc. It went beyond simple reading of the code, it was an inspection of how you wrote the code you did, and I found it very helpful.
It's not uncommon. In fact, at my alma mater, the students do the same thing in their IT security class. It's an exercise to show how easy it is to sniff packets, and find passwords for things like email accounts. This is meant to encourage better security. If the students don't know why something is important, they won't care. When I was in grade school, many kids didn't see why algebra was important, so they didn't care, and didn't bother learning the material.
I got permission from Robert Morris and Sam Madden to monitor the wireless traffic during their Computer Systems Engineering class and made an announcement at the beginning of a class period explaining what I’d be doing.
He told everyone up front he was going to do this and people were still chatting, watching TV, reading about Warcraft, and updating their blogs. Just imagine how bad it would have been if he hadn't said anything. I bet some hard working people who were rejected by MIT are really happy to read this.
It beats sniffing MIT students. Trust me.
out what this article is actually about, and why i should give a shit...famous professor at expensive college gets approval for lesson plan related to security?
in college to demonstrate secure passwords, i had a professor run john the ripper on our auth hashes in shadow. live-fire security demonstrations are always a good tool in college because it provides a route for hands on learning and a finer appreciation of the subject matter, but its no different than an accounting or finance class being asked to bring their tax returns in.
Good people go to bed earlier.
you can call it all you want. The Law states that any photo taken from outside the property is not. That is what matters, not what you think.
It's how I dealt with a Asshat neighbor. pointed a security cam at his house. Caught him throwing trash over the fence to the next door neighbors. I sent the footage to the cops and he got nailed. He threatened to sue me based on "invasion of privacy" and I dared him to do it, i even egged him on with" you ain't got the balls" and 'chicken" because I know the judge would eat him alive.
It's also why you can be arrested for indecent exposure when you are naked in your home. If I can see your dirty naughty bits from outdoors.
if you want privacy, keep the blinds closed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That sounds awesome. A hell of a lot better then my ComSci department that made us write out code on paper for the tests.
It's called "civility".
You ask before doing things could piss other people off even when you are technically within your rights to do so, and other people are willing to cooperate with you to mutual benefit.
You can choose to forgo "civility", but then other people will refer to you as an "asshole" and you will have fewer opportunities to benefit from non-zero-sum cooperation.
Only a distraction if you let it be. Returning to school this year, I use my notebook to take notes in all my classes except econ, because graphing is not much fun in TextEdit.The notebook is pretty valuable, although I suspect it would be of less use in a science/maths lecture. Easy text formatting for highlighting different pieces of information within the structure of the notes, useful for looking up relevant information, and of course I can type faster than I can write, so while putting down the important bits of what the professor is saying, I can also easily inject my own thoughts/comments on the subject as they come to me.
Do lots of kids use facebook and shit during class, of course they do, they're on mommy and daddy's dime, why wouldn't they fuck around? Not all do though. I'm sure there's correlation between grades and facebook use in class, and once could certainly theorise causation....
Don't egg anyone on. It raises you to "willful participant" status.
Had it escalated to a physical confrontation you may have had trouble claiming self defense.
You always want to remain a "reluctant participant".