Posted on 10/18/2004 4:38:28 PM PDT by gitmo
snip
Fictional scenario
At this year's Black Hat Briefing in Las Vegas, the annual Hacker court involved a scenario where a houseboat sailing up and down the Potomac River was able to use various unsecured wireless networks to access troop deployment plans from the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Presented in the form of a mock court case--including a real live federal court judge--the prosecution laid out how it identified various Web addresses used to launch the intrusion on the Naval Academy. However, when federal agents arrived at the homes matching the Internet addresses, they found the computer hard drives to be lacking any evidence of the crime. All of the homes, however, had 802.11 networks that were not secure, and all bordered the Potomac. Through some silly testimony that I won't explain here, prosecutors ultimately revealed that a houseboat sailing on the river had the ability to receive wireless signals from shore; the occupants of the boat had used the onshore wireless networks to commit their crimes. The prosecution provided forensic evidence of the houseboat's laptop, which contained the incriminating data.
Think that scenario is pretty far-fetched? Not so. snip
(Excerpt) Read more at reviews-zdnet.com.com ...
Another reason to hardwire...
I wish I could block all these useless animated GIF's.
BUMP!
Good point. It can't be done with most Home Router-AP combos.
But then again, you can use the MAC Address list at home, because unlike at many offices you don't have computers comeing and going all that often.
If your firewall-router-ap has Mac Address lists, its the best security option you can use.
Exactly.
If you are using IE, go to TOOLS / INTERNET OPTIONS / ADVANCED. De-select "Play animations in web pages".
I'll have to check. Thanks.
Good post. Too many people plug it in and turn it on!
Can a MAC address be spoofed?
I'll take my chances. Can't beat sitting on the couch, watching Fox, and FReeping on a laptop...
I did that at first. I figured as long as my personal use wasn't suffering I'd be glad to let my neighbors get some free bandwidth. My individual PCs were pretty well secured.
But I got to thinking about hackers driving down the road and using my access point to launch an attack on some company. Or terrorists using it for anonymous messages to their cohorts. So I enabled WEP, gave the network a unique name, etc. It's a bit of a hassle sometimes, but that's the price of responsibility.
yes.
In that case, go to TOOLS / INTERNET OPTIONS / ADVANCED. De-select "Play useless animations in web pages".
Heck, I'll go one better. Who needs a stupid computer when I've got a perfectly good typewriter. Figuring out new technology is just too intimidating, we might as well stick to what we know. And beyond that, denigrate what we don't know.
Can mac addresses be spoofed?
In normal network cards, yes.
But its really hard to do so with a wireless card because
access to this level of control is protected by federal regulation. (They can't let you tinker with the radio or all hell would break loose).
But even if hackers could change it, they would have no way of knowing which mac addresses are in your Mac Address list.
(Mac addresses are fuzzy addresses like 00-D0-B7-1D-F2-EB hard wired into the network card, and globally unique.)
MAC address' are easily spoofed. Especially if you are'nt running encryption in which case they can be sniffed trivially.
LOL!
LOL - if t'were only that easy!
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