Beautiful Security

Wireless Gone Wild

Having charted out the next frontier of wireless attacks and ways to combat them, I’ll take a step back to examine the well-known problems with Wi-Fi security and the social conditions of its use that make it an everyday danger.

Network users and administrators who are used to Ethernet-based LANs have trouble grasping the relative uncontrollability of wireless. A LAN uses very insecure protocols (sniffing and altering traffic, masquerading as another system, and carrying out denial-of-service attacks are all trivial), but the physical limitations of the cable are forgiving; it’s difficult to tap into the cable and attach a rogue system. Wireless deliberately removes this layer of physical security we so often take for granted, and allows traffic to spill out, even across such physical boundaries as walls and fences.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, administrators originally used WEP (if they were cautious enough to use any security) to secure access points. The main problem with WEP was that a hacker could simply snoop packets that were in the air and extract the keys to gain access. Numerous tools were created to allow even the most novice hackers to perform these attacks.

WPA was introduced to resolve the security shortcomings of WEP by closing the loophole that allowed the key to be extracted rapidly from snooped packets. For the moment, wireless engineers were happy.

Of course, the joy was short-lived when it was discovered that passphrases used ...