nanog mailing list archives

Re: Wifi Security


From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja () darkwing uoregon edu>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:59:28 -0800 (PST)


On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Jim Popovitch wrote:


Randy Bush wrote:
As others pointed out (to me as well), for a _man in the middle_ attack (e.g. impersonating www.paypal.com) it is necessary to play ARP games or otherwise insert yourself in the flow of traffic.

not really.  you just need to be there first with a bogus, redirecting,
dns response.

I wish I had a nickel (ok, a dollar) for every bogus laptop I've seen in hotels and airports that was setup for "co_presidents_club", "starbucks", "t-mobile" AND "tmobile", "corporate", etc. I've often wondered if those users were really being malicious, plain stupid, or were carrying around a laptop "owned" by someone else.

They were configured with a specific ssid at one point and are now beaconing in adhoc mode becasue they can't find that ssid. Crappy driver implentation is that root cause of that.

Either way, there are PLENTY of systems out there pretending to be something they aren't. I often try to connect to them and get some data, but most either won't give an IP, or if they do, they don't forward packets or respond with anything worthwhile.

Dumb users in adhoc mode.

I run a pretty tight system, so perhaps those faux APs are trying to detect other configs (Client for MS/Netware, F/P Sharing, SNMP, WINS, IPX, etc).

No they're just poor clueless users with bad software.

-Jim P.



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Joel Jaeggli           Unix Consulting         joelja () darkwing uoregon edu
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