TABLE OF CONTENTS Wireless standards
Wireless network vulnerabilities
Techniques for securing a wireless network
As New York City was gearing up for the Republican National Convention at the end of August, 2004, people from Newbery Networks, Inc. performed a sample war drive around the site of the convention. (A war drive is an attempt to find unsecured wireless networks that a client computer can join without the knowledge of the operators of the network.) They took some wireless computing equipment and attempted to find wireless access points and to determine whether the networks they found were secure. The results were frightening.
The war drive found 7,000 wireless devices, 1,123 of which were within blocks of Madison Square Garden. They also discovered a network named Wireless for Kerry !
Of the 7,000 devices, 2,161 access points and 821 client machines were broadcasting unique SSIDs. Those 821 client machines therefore were looking for specific access points. A hacker could easily change the SSID on his or her access point to trick a client into connecting to it.
As a final test, the researchers set up a wireless honeypot, which appeared to be a Linksys access point. They discovered that a wireless device attempted to connect to it every 90 seconds.
| Note | For more details on this war drive, see Computer-world, September 6, 2004. |
Wireless networks are very appealing: They re easy to install and allow users to connect from any location within range of an access point. Despite their...
