Jamming Wi-Fi With a $15 Dongle

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 13, 2015 @03:47AM from the no-soup-or-data-for-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this report about just how easy it is to disrupt if not entirely kill modern consumer-grade networks -- not just Wi-Fi, but Bluetooth and Zigbee networks, too. Crucial to determining the likelihood of any given kind of attack, though, is how much it would cost the attacker to attempt. The bad news for network owners and users is that it doesn't cost much at all: "According to Mathy Vanhoef, a PhD student at KU Leuven (Belgium), it can easily be done by using a Wi-Fi $15 dongle bought off Amazon, a Raspberry Pi board, and an amplifier that will broaden the range of the attack to some 120 meters."

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As Kravindish would say: by tepples · 2015-10-13 04:00 · Score: 4, Informative

"This is illegal, you know."
Marriott got fined over half a million dollars for jamming guests' Wi-Fi.
Re:With a $15 dongle? by bws111 · 2015-10-13 06:41 · Score: 4, Informative

Sorry. A guy in Florida was fined $48000 by the FCC for operating a cell phone jammer in his car to prevent others near him from using their phones.