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Wireless Networking Hardware

Warflying 2013 Access Points in Los Angeles 328

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-just-crazy dept.
Kallahar writes "We went warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties yesterday. Flying in a small plane at 1400 feet we detected 2013 802.11b APs in 75 minutes, 71% had no WEP encryption. A map and some pretty pictures are up at my writeup."
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Warflying 2013 Access Points in Los Angeles More

Warflying 2013 Access Points in Los Angeles

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  • That's nuts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GabeK ( 701376 ) * on Thursday December 11, 2003 @01:59PM (#7691969) Homepage
    What I find pretty amazing is the 500+ people with the default SSID. It's like my apartment complex...if I'm not careful, I can get on one of three different networks and not know it!
    • Why, is one of those unencrypted networks yours perhaps? Don't you just set a perfered network?

      • Re:That's nuts (Score:2, Interesting)

        by GabeK ( 701376 ) *
        Not me! The second I fired up my AP I had people in. Not even 5 minutes without WEP and 2 addresses doled out to machines not in my place.
    • Does anyone have experience getting a signal through brick houses? I've got both an SMC and Linksys .11g routers - neither do well beyond 30 feet when I'm outside.

      I bought the Linksys last night as I plan to use it to expand the range. Ideas?

    • if I'm not careful, I can get on one of three different networks and not know it!

      Maybe you should change the default SSID of your WAP.

    • Re:That's nuts (Score:3, Informative)

      by gamlidek ( 459505 )
      Just because the SSID is default/broadcasted doesn't mean anything special. What's special is that there's no other security enabled on your neighbor's AP's. It also appears you are connecting without any WEP or watnot on your own wifi lan, as well, if you're connecting to your neighbor's APs or you have more than one profile set up. I think you can create a preferred profile.

      With MAC adress filtering and 128-bit WEP, the difficulty in hacking that wifi is somewhat prohibitive unless the hacker has unl

      • question for ya... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sbma44 ( 694130 )
        does wep encrypt mac addresses too? or can those be sniffed easily w/ wep on?

        Personally, I just use MAC filtering. Yeah, you can spoof a MAC address pretty easily on most hardware in windows. But I'm on 802.11b, and WEP definitely slows things down. And it was periodically resetting the connection on my Orinoco card.

        Bottom line, consumer wireless gear can't keep out anyone who's determined to get in. I say make a stab at it to disclaim some liability, use decent security on your LAN, and call it a day

    • I live in LA and I have wifi access point with its default settings. If you can reach it you can reach, i don't care. Hell I can't even get signal in my back yard. I personally don't care if anyone uses my wifi, whats the worse they can do? Browse the internet anonymously(my wired machines sit behind a firewall) they could do this at the library. Even at jury duty, they had ethernet ports you could plug into while waiting to be called in for a trial.

      • Re:That's nuts (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jarnis ( 266190 )
        Laugh when you get your net access cut and/or you get sued due to something that originated from your IP(s). You are responsible what connects to the network via your pipe to the outside. If you prefer to sit on the net with your ass bare for unauthorized Rear Entry, do not whine when someone abuses it and causes you trouble.

        New spam tech;
        1. Roam around for open wireless networks, run spam off your laptop connected to that wireless lan until cut off.
        2. Drive to next WLAN, rinse, repeat
        3. Profit!!!

      • Re:That's nuts (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mcmonkey ( 96054 )
        whats the worse they can do?

        Download kiddie pr0n, send spam, launch a DoS attack...in short, the types of things that can get you in trouble.

        Seriously, jokers like you ruin the internet for the rest of us. "So I'm running an open relay, what's the worst they can do?" Dipshit.

  • Photos (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Cajun Hell ( 725246 )
    Wireless, schmireless -- I love the aerial photos!

  • Hey thats my SSID (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Delta-9 ( 19355 ) <delta9@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday December 11, 2003 @01:59PM (#7691975)
    "Hackerish SSID (h3lpm3) 15 (0.7%)"

    Hey thats my SSID!

    All kidding aside, I wonder how many /. readers' SSIDs are in that netstumbler log, and I wonder how many are afraid to reply and say so since their GPS coords are associatated to their SSID.
    • Had they gone down the 405 instead of PCH, mine might be in there, but then again I don't broadcast it.

      Somehow I don't think they can crack them that quickly, can they? Don't they need a decent sampling of packets?

      Either way, mine would fall into the Hackerish category.
      • Maybe their plot is inaccurate, because they only list access points directly beneath their aircraft, but I'd guess the signals would have a pretty big radius that far up in the air. That said, they flew directly over my place. Are you jealous?
        • Nope, not jealous... They landed at the airport right next to my office, Santa Monica.

          It's a pretty safe bet that our office AP is in that list, most likely as an Informational SSID.
      • Somehow I don't think they can crack them that quickly, can they? Don't they need a decent sampling of packets?

        Airsnort used to need about 100meg worth of data (not just SSID broadcast packets) to crack 128bit WEP. Sometimes it needed less, sometimes more. Either way they'd have had to do a little bit of circling to get that much data :)

        They'd have had a little more fun had they used Kismet. [kismetwireless.net] Then they've have picked up some of the AP's that weren't broadcasting SSID's (kismet works in promiscuous (sp) m

    • Re:Hey thats my SSID (Score:3, Interesting)

      by antdude ( 79039 )
      I don't remember where I saw this, but one user put his/her SSID as "GETOFFMYNETWORK" or something like that. I will have to try that too. ;)

      Speaking of funny SSIDs, what are your SSIDs like?

      I use a scientific ant name on mine.

  • 2013 access points... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:00PM (#7691976)
    ...is nothing; it's really kinda cool that there are that many.

    1430 of them being unsecured, that bothers the heck out of me.

    -JDF

    • Re:2013 access points... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gnuadam ( 612852 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:07PM (#7692060) Journal
      Just because it doesn't have wep doesn't quite mean that they're unsecured. I don't use wep, but I only allow designated mac addresses onto my network, and make sure that any traffic I care about is either encrypted at the protocol level, or is ssh-tunneled to a wired machine. I trust ssl much more than wep.
      • The MAC address is being sent in the clear, so anyone can sniff it and spoof it pretty easy. Not that I blame you, for I do the same thing, and just hope that the measures I use to detect outsiders works.
        • Yeah. Step 2 in my plan is frequent log checking. But spoofing a mac is at least as hard as wep cracking - only someone who really wants into my network will try it. If I really really cared about my network's security, I wouldn't use 802.11b.

          • Re:2013 access points... (Score:4, Informative)

            by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:34PM (#7692360)
            To "spoof" a MAC address on a lot of cards involves typing in the new set of numbers, nothing more. Many network cards come with the software needed to change the MAC address in the event of a conflict since many small time vendors only use a small range of addresses on cards they ship.
            • But it still requires you to sniff it. Which, I admit is easier than cracking wep, but not by enough to make me worry too much.
              • If your running unencrypted they nust need to download some software to "see" the MAC address you're using. Granted, they would need to want access to YOUR site rathr then any others in the area, but it is very easy to do.
                • And to crack a wep key, all you have to do is download some software, and wait a bit, and you've got access. If someone wants on, they can get on. Wep or not you've still got to be watchful.

          • But spoofing a mac is at least as hard as wep cracking

            I don't know whether this will work for a wireless interface, but for the wired ethernet interfaces I've come across (NE2000, 3Com, Via, RealTek), a simple

            ifconfig eth0 hw ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

            ...is sufficient to spoof a MAC address.

      • I don't use WEP or MAC control because some of my clients don't talk to the router with it on. For instance, the USB NIC I use for my Tivo won't work with encryption on.
      • Just because it doesn't have wep doesn't quite mean that they're unsecured.

        Yes. I once set up a system using VPN- the wireless network was wide open; well, I did have WEP turned on, as if that matters :-)

        But cracking wep didn't do you a lot of good, the wireless router plugged straight into a firewall- and it was set up with extremely paranoid filtering rules- nothing, not even DNS, nothing except VPN packets got through that.

        The biggest weakness is the users machines- if somebody hacked one of those v

    • Maybe some of them are open on purpose? Like Starbuck's and so forth? (Or are those open? I don't even know...)

      But if we had more open access points, on purpose, there'd be no need for a wireless internet company. You'd just use whatever nearby WAP was up. Free internet wherever you go.

      In other news, they flew into the future -- 2013! (Must have used a Cessna and a Commodore 64.) What are things like ten years from now??
    • Remember that it's an area of millions of people....

      2013 access points for 20 million people isn't all that impressive, to me at least.

      (If they had flown a little further south, down to the Irvine/Laguna/Mission Viejo areas, they would have started to see a few more secure points, as they flew over eEye and Foundstone, and all the new tech that's growing down here).
    • Nothing says "I love you" like the gift of 1,430 unsecured networks.

      hg

    • How to leave my access point *IN*secure? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:51PM (#7692538) Homepage
      1430 of them being unsecured, that bothers the heck out of me.
      OK, my immediate reaction is ... why?

      Fine, corporate "enterprises" (beginning to hate that word) should have secured their wireless networks. But lets face it, most of the APs discovered are probably Linksys routers sitting in some dude's office. Exactly why do all of these need to be secured?

      I'm a normal, conscientious Internet user. Most of the day, my Internet usage consists of email and (I admit) wasting time on Slashdot. I'm not looking at porn, and I'm not wasting significant amounts of bandwidth. Honestly, who should care if I happen to use their unprotected wireless network?

      Furthermore, I personally wouldn't care if anyone used mine. I would love to feel confident that I could leave my wireless access point unprotected. Several points nag me, however:

      • Every now and then, I'm going to want to download some Linux ISOs. (OK, I mean labels' entire catalogs of songs on MP3.) When I want to do that, *I* should have the bandwidth to do it. I pay for it, I get dibs. So far, I don't know of anything available to your average consumer that will let you throttle bandwidth for your "guests" at will (or, ideally, automatically -- my own MAC addresses get top priority).
      • The kiddie porn issue is an issue. As is, I guess, MP3 downloading. I don't want to have to firewall out P2P ports (and play the game of "what port are they using this week") just to protect myself from people using my AP who are too dumb to cover their tracks. No, I do not believe "but my port was unprotected, open to the world" is going to hold up in court.
      • People are, by and large, bastards. If I leave my AP unprotected, it's not going to be used occasionally by passers-by etc. It's going to be my next-door neighbor, using it to download massive AVIs all night long, all the time thinking "hee hee hee, this dumbass left his wireless AP unprotected." If I were to open my AP, I'd want the first thing to pop up on your browser to be a notice letting you know that, yes, I see you, yes, I'm logging you, and yes, if you were a decent person and you wanted to use this thing all the time, you might drop by, ring my doorbell, and offer to kick me a couple bucks every month.
      Furthermore, I'd like to publicly thank the various people around town whose unprotected access points I've used without permission. You never knew I did it, but it probably saved me some hassle.

      And finally, I'd like to publicly ask owners of coffee shops, delis, diners, bars, and other lounge-around spots: Have you ever considered not charging for that miraculous wireless network you just "installed"? Face it, Internet access is a flat fee for you. You want to bring in customers to buy that cup of half-and-half (I once heard that milk-based froofy coffee drinks have such an exorbitant profit margin that Starbuck's is essentially in the milk business). So why not do it by offering them a place to sit around, relax, and use their laptops? Seems to me it's no skin off your nose. Coffee shops have been providing shelves of books for years -- why not Internet access?

      I bring it up because the coffee shop down the street from my house recently switched from offering free wireless access to charging for it -- something like $15/month, fully a third of the cost of a DSL line that will give me full high-speed access around the clock. Lots of other places are starting to do the same here (San Francisco) -- the "trial period" is over, now you have to pay.

      I ask you: Where's the sense in that? I had just gotten into the habit of spending my mornings in that coffee shop, eating bagels and coffee while I got some work done, when they pulled the rug out from under me. Now the main thing that keeps me going down there is the fact that a couple of the shop's neighbors have their own wireless APs -- unprotected, of course. So now I'm not going to the shop as often, I'm buying less coffee and bagels, and worse, you went ahead and paid for all that (evidently quite expensive) Internet hardware and now I'm not going to be part of that new profit-center either.

      Make it free, man! Wired magazine said as much, months ago.

  • Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tebriel ( 192168 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:00PM (#7691982)
    I'll just get a hot air balloon and get to the right spot and kiss those Internet access fees goodbye!

    • Re:Sweet (Score:3, Interesting)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 )
      Actually, it'd be an interesting exercise to set up a relay in a balloon, and "bounce" signals from an AP over obstacles, etc. Of course, you'd have to deal with the UFO factor - any lighter than air device capable of sustaining the weight of a pair of APs (or a bridge) and the motor/battery needed to power the setup would probably be VERY noticable, and likely to attract notice of homeland security types...

    • Re:Sweet (Score:3, Interesting)

      by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) *
      can I get one of those car dealership balloons and just float a wire and an antenna up there?? I'm sure some neighbors would complain, but I believe FCC rules override community laws (ie. you have the right to put up DirecTV dish even if the neighborhood made it illegal)

  • Bye bye.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    heheh.. a page with some thumbnails linked to 175k-300K pictures. His site is so dead.

    • Re:Bye bye.. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > heheh.. a page with some thumbnails linked to 175k-300K pictures. His site is so dead. P. Not as long as the site's being hosted out of the laptop in the Cessna. What better use for 1440 unsecured WAP points?

  • I live in LA! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jedir0x ( 522662 ) <.brian_dilley. .at. .hotmail.com.> on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:01PM (#7691989) Homepage Journal
    Woah, nice to have a map of all the access points, for those times when I'm without internet connection ... or don't want to use my own :D Thank god for wireless!
    • I wouldn't call it a map, since he was holding a hand-held antenna, and the GPS only reports the position of the plane. If someone maps out all the access points using the GPS coordinates, it'll more than likely look like a single line across the county. The AP's should fall generally along that line, but at 1400 ft, they could probably be a mile away (or more) in either direction.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:01PM (#7691998)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • East LA (Score:5, Funny)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) * on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:02PM (#7692002) Homepage
    In East LA, a pilot is "warflying" when averting the numerous bullets flying into the air, shot by drunk cholos on July 4th. Talk about bombs bursting in air.

    And I can hear it already - hey ese, you forgot to encrypt your airport station, homes!

  • Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)

    by halo8 ( 445515 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:02PM (#7692004)
    On December 10, 2003 we went out Warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties. Not5150 was the pilot of the 4-seater beechcraft and Kallahar was the laptop/gps/antenna operator. In a 75 minute flight from Pomona to Los Angeles to Santa Monica to Long Beach to Orange and back to Pomona, 2013 access points were found.
    The antenna was a mere Orinoco Omnidirectional Range Extender which was hand held. Unfortunately, the GPS didn't work for the first 20 minutes, and the wireless card crashed (had to reboot) while we were over long beach (took 7 minutes).

    Equipment
    Laptop Compaq Presario 2190US (2.4Ghz Celeron)
    802.11b card Orinoco Silver
    Antenna Orinoco 2-3dBi Omni
    GPS Magellan Meridian
    Software NetStumbler on Win2k
    Flight Time: 1 hour 15 minutes @ 1400ft

    (699x446 - 134k)

    Statistics
    Total APs 2013
    No Encryption 1441 (71.6%)
    WEP Encryption 572 (28.4%)
    Default SSID 513 (24.5%)
    Hackerish SSID
    (h3lpm3) 15 (0.7%)
    Informational SSID
    (southcoastcircuits) 23 (1.1%)
    Someone's Name 110 (5.5%)

    NetStumbler Files
    WarFlying (1.0MB)
    The drive home (168k)
    (for reference purposes)

  • all fun and games... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:03PM (#7692009)
    We went warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties yesterday.

    Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone gets caught flying upside down, no pants on, playing with the stick, lookin' at kiddie porn...

  • 1400 feet? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by planckscale ( 579258 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:03PM (#7692010) Journal
    You would think at that alitude they wouldn't pick up anything, considering my buddie's WAP won't reach his backyard. I wonder if they're mostly business WAPs?

    • Re:1400 feet? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ThogScully ( 589935 ) <neilsd@neilschelly.com> on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:06PM (#7692048) Homepage
      Well, he was using a more sensitive handheld antenna, but also consider there was almost no interference between him and those access points, no walls, trees, etc - just a roof and clear sunny skies in most cases.
      -N

      • Re:1400 feet? (Score:3, Informative)

        by GlassHeart ( 579618 )
        just a roof and clear sunny skies in most cases.

        More likely, they were picking up the signals diagonally through windows, rather than from directly below through roofs. One of the reasons satellite phones perform poorly indoors is because signals have difficulty passing through the roof. (Cellular towers are at much lower altitude, and their signals reach you mainly through windows.)

    • Re:1400 feet? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:14PM (#7692138)
      Air to ground doesn't have anything to block the radio waves. You get really good range.

      Same thing across open water. Although you get less range than in the air.

      • Re:1400 feet? (Score:2, Informative)

        by goosman ( 145634 )
        > Air to ground doesn't have anything to block the radio waves. You get really good range.

        Most people don't put APs on their roofs, so I'd say that there is a lot to block those waves. Wood, shingles, metal, clay, etc. The antenna and a card with good sensitivity helped this a great deal.

    • Re:1400 feet? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) *
      I use my neighbors AP from about 500ft down the street through trees. (Always at least 1Mbps solid connection)
  • Another shocking thing is that many has no password or the default admin password.

    (obvious)Orange County and LA County is not Santa Clara County I guess (/obvious)

  • Warbussing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spooky_nerd ( 646914 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:06PM (#7692038)
    I had a similar, but lower tech, experience just yesterday. On a bus ride through Seattle I flipped open a standard laptop with a Cisco wifi card, and found dozens of access points. Most of them where open. I wonder how long it will be until wireless companies start offering security out of the box? How hard would it be to have a wireless access point that shipped with a random password and instructions on how to use it? It's pretty obvious that the average person doesn't realize what the risks are. I know because as a desktop support tech I get asked about this all the time. As soon as I start talking about things like WEP and MAC addresses, I see eyes glazing over.

    • Re:Warbussing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ReTay ( 164994 )
      No the problem is that unless it inconveniences them they don't care. It is the same thing as applying patches to whatever the OS they are using. They just can't be bothered. My roommate runs his WAP wide open because he doesn't want to bother typing the MAC into his router to restrict it to approved MAC only. In my not so humble opinion they get what they are asking for. They get burned they learn. (Shrug)

    • Re:Warbussing (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jonfelder ( 669529 )
      The question isn't how hard...the question is how much harder is it.

      If the typical computer user has a choice between an access point that they just plugin and use, or one that they have to mess with, which do you think they'll most likely pick?
  • a good site that maps the rest of the US? I had found one, but can no longer locate it. Florida is of particular interest ...

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by markclong ( 575822 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:06PM (#7692047)
    http://slushdot.org/mirror/warfly/warflying.php [slushdot.org]

    Coming slowly but surely!

  • So how long before... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:09PM (#7692078)
    So, how long will it be before warflying is illegal or requires a permit. Here's [rapidcityjournal.com] a funny/sad/true story about a guy who recently got into a lot of trouble for hunting from an airplane.
    • If I were the author, I'd be a little wary of calling it "Warflying". US authorities are mighty uptight already, and would probably send out investigators to make his life miserable faster than cops arresting students for using PHP in the privacy of their dorms...

      That said, I found some WAPs in my condo that I can connect to from my livingroom. I'm as-yet undecided if I want to siphon some bandwidth from them.

      Regardless, when I go to visit my parent's place over the holidays, I'm making sure my dad's WA
    • On one hand, we have a few geeks with a laptop, a GPS, and an antennae.

      On the other we got some redneck shooting at stuff from an airplane with real live bullets.

  • WiFi Security (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dfn5 ( 524972 )
    71% had no WEP encryption

    WEP is not secure, therefore, the fact that WEP is turned off doesn't make it insecure. The best thing to do with 802.11 is to turn off WEP and use secure application protocols, like Kerberos, OpenSSH, OpenAFS, SSL Imap, etc, etc... WEP only adds useless overhead.

    And as far as the SSID goes, if you can snoop for the SSID what does it matter what the value is? Default or otherwise.

  • Warflying....ok.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrtroy ( 640746 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:10PM (#7692088)
    Thats all cool, checking for open networks in your little plane.

    But WHY did you have to set up all those servers to syn SCO?

    They are an honest company looking to make a profit from suing their potential customers, which doesnt follow the DOT COM era at all, so it should be profitable.

    On a side note, you also violated homeland security.
  • I can see my house('s network) from here!

  • Wow.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NegativeK ( 547688 ) <tekarienNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:12PM (#7692116) Homepage
    I'm not an aviator, so I dunno how scary this really is, but doesn't 1400 feet seem kinda low? I mean, wardriving is fun (I'll readily admit that), but some of those pictures look awfully close to those buildings. :O

    *Shrug.* Someone with actual light aircraft experience, please correct me..

    • Re:Wow.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by CmdrTostado ( 653672 )
      FAR 91.119 - Minimum safe altitudes: General.
       Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
      (a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.
      b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius

  • Flew over my office. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Brigadier ( 12956 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:13PM (#7692120)


    According to his map he flew right over one of our offices (Inglewood). It does seem enticing to stick an antenna out on the terrace and see what comes up. Especially since VPN traffic seems to be eating up mos of our T-1 these days.

    on a side note I recently enquired at a major computer store. one which right now is advertising free set up. And talkign to the tech he assured me that all I had to do to set up a wireless network was plug it in. Now with things like nimda, Cade Red and such with the advent of everyoen goign wireless at home and not either encryting there connections or passwording it off. hackers/script kiddies will have a field day with this. I jus tpull up to some pure schmucks house log in launch and attack then drive off and the feds would never find me.
  • If you were to start a download and use DA or some such program, how much aggregate bandwidth could you use from the airplane? several gigs per second, I imagine!
    • 11MB/s. or 22MB/s if he had 802.11g working on a lot of them.

      That's like saying 'Hey, I got 100 ethernet cables, since their all 100 MB i'm going super fast!'

      Without etherchanneling or something aggergating said bandwidth with an equally large number of cards not much is going to happen.

  • You bastards! My AP is on that map!

  • No WEP != No security (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:14PM (#7692146) Homepage Journal
    Just because a system does not use WEP does not mean it is insecure.

    I've been playing with a WAP - my intention is to firewall it to the point that the only things you can do are DNS, DHCP, VPN, and accessing a password-protected HTTP proxy with bandwidth throttling.

    The only thing WEP would do in such a case is prevent somebody from sniffing the proxy's password from the air, and if I cared I would just move the proxy over to HTTPS.

    Just as WEP != secure, !WEP != !secure.

    So all the "OMFG! 73% of all the APs we sniffed weren't using WEP, therefore 73% of all APs aren't secured" is somewhat flawed reasoning.

    Granted, it is likely pretty close to the truth. But it is not guaranteed to be the truth.
  • How many do you think allow only certain MAC addresses to connect?
    • Given that they cant figure out how to turn on encryption, set a password or even change the name of the device I'm willing to bet very few know how to limit connections by MAC address. Whats more several WAP systems given away by ISPs and the like dont even support MAC filtering.

  • Enforcing Security (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mr_lithic ( 563105 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:20PM (#7692200) Homepage Journal
    This story is not only about people finding open wireless networks but also abysmal network security being practised by some folks who have installed wireless kit

    There has to be some way of ensuring that people sort out the security on their boxes. How about not allowing the box to connect unless they change the default settings?

    In several offices we used to set the first password for the user accounts as their user login, and then not allow the same password to be used again. We knew the temptation was too great for people to use their login as the network password (and too easy for someone to crack).

  • Just like a securityu advisory, it would be nice if he could somehow let people know before he posted a map that lest other people steal their bandwidth...but I guess there really is no other way to let people know. Hell, most of those people probably don't read slashdot, so they won't figure out
  • He seems to have flown right over my house.

    My network doesn't show up in the list, though.

    For the record, it's called "ACCESS DENIED" and it's got WEP enabled...

    If you are in the neighborhood, and need access, just gimme a holler. Pants-less one-handed wardrivers need not apply.

  • WEP + MAC filtering (Score:2, Informative)

    by gamlidek ( 459505 )
    WEP is fine, but if you live in an apartment building, you have unlimited time for your hacker neighbors to crack the WEP, even 128-bit. Please use MAC address filtering. Here's a
    good how-to [arstechnica.com] if you're interested.

    And stop broadcasting your SSID! =)

    • Re:WEP + MAC filtering (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:40PM (#7692421)
      Right, like a person capable of cracking WEP isn't going to know how to sniff a valid MAC and reset the MAC on his own card...

      MAC locking is only secure against very casual intrusion. Most cards (all?) can be re-flashed with a new MAC.



      • "re-flashed with a new MAC?"

        I'll bet your computer is infested with the start button virus, isn't it?

        • No, actually I use Linux, but since I've never changed the MAC on my card (what the hell reason would there be?) I just assumed it was done via flashing, like on Windows.

          In any case that only strengthens my point -- somebody can drive around and change MAC addresses in real time. MAC locking is useless.

  • That's about the number of Starbucks in LA (Score:3, Funny)

    by xenophrak ( 457095 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:32PM (#7692341)
    Sure those weren't just Starbuck's/TMobile hotspots?

    Which do not support WEP anyway.
  • What I find interesting is that the guy slashdotted himself...one way to work out your firewall and web server, I suppose.

  • In related news... live from the Sargasso Sea! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Markvs ( 17298 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:33PM (#7692348) Journal
    A WarSCUBA expedition has found forty-two 802.11b connections! ...none were using WEP, but Kerberos was there.

  • Defense against warflying: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:35PM (#7692371) Journal

    A combination of AAA, Autonomous Advanced Algorithms and SAM systems, Secure Authority Message, designed to bring down any hostile airborne WLAN sniffer. Available in both US [fas.org] and Russian [fas.org] flavours.

  • I saw articles about planned rollouts of high speed network connectivity on planes, but I din't think they meant this!
  • good thing my router has been out for a while. granted, they probably picked up the neighbor's WAPs when i'm down at the pool...
  • How do you read the netstumbler files, without installing netstumbler?
  • And after reading this sort of thing, do we wonder at all why there are people in Homeland Security starting to flap their gums about regulating IT at a Federal level?

  • FAA called yet? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jemenake ( 595948 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @04:44PM (#7694032)
    1,400 feet? Your images show that you flew right over LAX. I hope your pilot ascended up to the altitude of the southbound transition corridor... or, by my calculations, he's gonna have his license for about another 2.1 hours. :)

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