[ale] About Wireless Connectivity

[Bob Toxen]

On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 02:27:58PM -0500, D. Alan Stewart wrote:
> Would you care to elaborate as to why?

Why what?

Why WEP is almost worthless?  Because it can be cracked in 12 hours or
so by anyone who has $100 and 12 hours to spend.

Why MAC filtering is worthless?  This already was answered on ALE.  It is
because it is trivial to spoof a MAC address.  Btw, for MAC filtering
purposes, MAC addresses are not encrypted.


Why SysAdmins don't turn on WEP?

  1. Procrastination.
  2. "My network won't be breached."
  3. Dunno know how and cannot be bothered to learn.

Bob

> Bob Toxen wrote:

> >On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 04:33:27PM -0500, tfreeman at intel.digichem.net 
> >wrote:



> >>The comments about securing wireless lans leave me glad that I've decided 
> >>to _not_ utilize the technology and stick with physical wireing. I don't 
> >>want to work with another layer of complexity.





> >>However, it also begs the question of "How open are most wireless 
> >>systems?", or perhaps better stated "How clueless are most network 
> >>admins?" A friend in security has indicated some real horror stories, but 
> >>has anybody actually surveyed a major city with the idea of quantifying 
> >>the situation?



> >About half of SysAdmins don't even enable WEP.

> >Btw, WEP is close to worthless for security.  Turning off broadcasting
> >and using MAC filtering are very close to worthless.  Don't use it unless
> >you use a good VPN strategy!



> >>-- 
> >>=============================================
> >>If you think Education is expensive
> >>Try Ignorance
> >>                  Author Unknown
> >>============================================



> >Bob Toxen
> >bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
> >http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security 
> >consulting]
> >http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 
> >2/e"]
> >Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 
> >1990.

> >"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
> >  -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002
> >_______________________________________________
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