Re: Wireless Security

[Dennis Opacki <dopacki () adotout com>]

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The NIST wireless STIG has some good reference information on deploying 
and securing wireless networks.

http://csrc.nist.gov/pcig/STIGs/wirelessstig-v2r1-071003.zip

Regarding registration of MAC addresses, many APs support Radius for 
MAC address authentication. I have seen setups where users are allowed 
to add their card to a radius database via a web form on a corporate 
intranet. As users typically have to authenticate to a corporate 
intranet, this can help tie a specific user to a card MAC address.  
When cross-referenced with the Radius server logs, than can provide 
some semblance of an audit trail.

Note that it would be important to add removal of MAC address 
information to your employee termination checklist.

- -Dennis

On Nov 28, 2003, at 9:40 AM, Patrick Doyle wrote:

> Hope this question isn't off topic,
>
> I am currently looking at securing wireless networks using Cisco 
> hardware and wanted to check what peoples thoughts are on security.
>
> I have read about using LEAP and also IPSEC, my concerns about using 
> LEAP would be that although the client and access point send hashes of 
> the username and password, and also dynamically create WEP keys, the 
> process is still vulnerable to brute force attacks.  Now i know you 
> can lock down the Access Point (AP) to specific MAC addresses, 
> however, in our environment i can see wireless being used for meeting 
> rooms etc, so the users would be random which would mean the constant 
> addition / removal of MACs to the AP which would probably not be 
> possible or practical all of the time.   Although policy could dictate 
> that when a wireless card is given out, the MAC address in added to 
> the AP, however if you have multiple APs in different areas of 
> building, being administered by different IT depts then this could 
> soon become be a problem.
>
> To me IPSEC looks like be the better solution using SecurID tokens 
> (one time passwords) to authenticate users, any thoughts would be 
> appreciated.
>
>
>
>
>
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