Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: Dsniff'ng wireless networks


From: ed.rolison () power alstom com
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:09:58 +0100



Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC wireless lans are effectively switched.
Each access point-NIC uses a separate encryption key (there are weaknesses
but...)
and thus the NIC only 'sees' traffic being directed at it.
It seems also that it's quite hard to get them to enter promiscuous mode for
similar reasons - if
it's listening to all the traffic, then the encryption breaks down.

You might have some joy, but the best I can see for collecting the datagrams
would be something like
a scanner (radio) interfaced to a computer. Of course, you still have to break
the encryption, but there
was an article posted to one of the securityfocus lists regarding 'weaknesses'
in WEP.

(this is based on a little research I did into 802.11b YMMV)

Cheers
Ed






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