[LUNI] Linksys Wireless range issue

[James Bliss]

03/03/02 08:50:50 AM, "Keith T. Garner" <kgarner at kgarner.com> wrote:

>On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 03:44:38, James Bliss said:
>> If you have anything prorpietary on any of the computers connected to 
your 
>> wireless network then you are at risk of being hacked and losing that 
data.  
>> Regardless, you are open to having your network hacked due to the 
>> wireless security issues.
>
>Of course one could always set up the wireless access so its
>1) more strongly encrypted (i.e. done at the ip level) and 2) requires
>authentication.  The easiest way is to put the WAP off in its own network
>on the otherside of a firewall and make people use a VPN to get in.
>
>Keith
>
>-- 
>   Keith T. Garner                                        kgarner at kgarner.com

Your suggestion of setting up a firewall is probably the best.  I was not just 
talking about setting up the Wireless access with no security turned on.  
The most recent standard which is implemented has a flaw in the security 
algorythm when the encryption is turned on.  This flaw was published over 
a year ago (no certain of exact timing).

This substantially means that someone who can tap into your transmissions 
will be just like someone who can walk up to a patch plate on your network 
plug in.  Then they are in the network, bypassing all firewalls, etc (man in 
the middle attacks, sniffing, etc.).

If you are interested in reading about this, a guick search on google 
returned:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~waa/wireless.html  Which has several articles 
about the 802.11 security issues.

Jim