O’Reilly Network: Dispelling the Myth of Wireless Security [Aug. 14, 2003]

September 3. 2003 by Del.

O’Reilly Network: Dispelling the Myth of Wireless Security [Aug. 14, 2003]: “Dispelling the Myth of Wireless Security”

“Editor’s note: In this first excerpt from Wireless Hacks, author Rob Flickenger shows how to find out just how “secure” your standard wireless network really is.

Related Reading

Wireless Hacks

100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools

By Rob Flickenger

Table of Contents

Index

Despite a few good online articles and countless alarmist news items decrying parasitic War Drivers and War Chalkers contributing to the moral decay of the country, a surprising number of people still install wireless equipment with all of the defaults enabled. There are a huge number of access points in use today that unintentionally advertise a default SSID, bridge directly to an Ethernet network, and use no encryption whatsoever (or a WEP key left on the factory setting, and therefore easily deduced).

But even if all standard precautions are in place, how much “security” do wireless access points actually provide? Having heard all sorts of widely varying estimates and assumptions from people who should be able to make an educated guess, I finally decided to see for myself what it would take to circumvent the security of my own standard 802.11b network”

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