Re: Wifi Security

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

> Leaving the politics aside, it's a lot harder than it seems.  After an 
> active attack at a security conference a few years ago, a prof had some 
> of his grad students investigate it.  Multipath, variable signal 
> attenuation, and the like make it very, very hard.  (If it worked, the 
> idea was to embed the localizer in a WiFi-equipped Sony Aibo -- a robot 
> dog to hunt down miscreants...)
>
> Btw -- a lot of hot spots already do ARP-filtering to block ARP-level 
> attacks on the default router's MAC address.  This problem is already 
> out there.
>
>                 --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

I am always careful when I write "ALL", "EVERY*" or "VERY", however, it 
is very simple. Point is that like with everything else, the Bad Guys 
learn and have a fountain of knowledge called recent Internet history to 
learn from.

Employing different evasion techniques can indeed be a problem and this 
will turn into a very disturbing war of cop and thief, never ending and 
always advancing.. yet, it does allow for an active hand in combating 
these individuals if operational teams will be ready and equipped to 
answer the call when the time comes, instead of after it's already an 
epidemic.

Further, just one solution is never enough... strong security, security 
policy and intrusion detection systems for the real systems and AP's are 
going to be essential.

Once again I fear these things will not be invested upon until they are 
useless and a money-drain.

But aside to all that I must once again bow before your wisdom and 
humble my opinion to "yeah, it's not that simple".
:)

"Google wifi security operations". Yummy! Now my mind is just floating 
with ideas.. I hope theirs are as well.

        Gadi.