New answers tagged wifi
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I suspect the answer has to do with the "statelessness" of the WIFI router. Incoming and outgoing packets are treated uniformly. If some sort of encryption were negotiated on a per-connection basis, the router would have to maintain state for each communicating partner.
This would break the "layer" model; that packets are treated uniformly and higher ...
2
You're correct that they are not the same problem: Password authentication and symmetric encryption are fully independent concepts that can each be implemented without the other. However, a password is one of several ways to produce the key necessary to operate the encryption.
An encrypted connection such as that between your computer and your AP is ...
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The other answers have already explained that Firesheep-style attacks (basically MitM trhough ARP spoofing) have nothing to do with WiFi itself. This is a link-layer issue.
As for why open WiFi networks don't have encryption. Well, they just don't. I don't really know why they decided not to, I can only speculate. One very obvious reason is MitM attacks, as ...
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When you are talking about "no password" and "same password," I imagine you are referring to the pre-shared key. This is not actually a password, but used as a known value by the station and AP to generate and securely (at least from outside sources without the known value) exchange keying material for the encrypted traffic. WPA/WPA2-Personal do not ...
9
Firesheep has nothing to do with the WiFi encryption. If you and I were both on an encrypted WiFi connection, I would still be able to Firesheep your data.
What Firesheep does happens at the router level. It does not intercept the waves on air (well, not exactly)
Basically, it runs an ARP spoofing attack. This sort of attack can be run on a LAN network as ...
11
The question (to most people) is an oxymoron. By definition, people will think that "open WiFi" means "un-encrypted WiFi. To me you seem to be asking "Why did the people that wrote the 802.11 standard way back in 1997 make the decisions that they did?"
The short answer - we can only find out by asking them (or seeing if there are any discussion documents ...
1
Say you have 10 users.
In PSK mode all 10 users are using the same passphrase to generate the same key. Therefore, the likelyhood of capturing traffic and analyzing it to find the key is higher with so much traffic, and that key will be good until all 10 users agree to change the passphrase (and therefore the key)
If those same 10 users use their own ...
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WPA2 is more secure than WPA as explained by Terry. You just need to understand the difference between personal (pre shared key) and enterprise versions of both the protocols.
The personal version is where all the users share a secret password that is configured in the access point. In the enterprise version there is a central authentication server and all ...
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The PSK variants of WPA and WPA2 uses a 256-bit key derived from a password for authentication.
The Enterprise variants of WPA and WPA2, also known as 802.1x uses a RADIUS server for authentication purposes. Authentication is achieved using variants of the EAP protocol. This is a more complex but more secure setup.
The key difference between WPA and WPA2 ...
1
WEP was one of the first protocols which tried to secure the wireless networks. It was a part of IEEE 802.11 standards. It was cracked almost a decade back and rarely seen these days.For details on how it worked and its vulnerabilities you may see this
WEP made use of RC4 stream cipher for encryption.The problem with RC4 is if the same key stream was used ...
-1
Essentially, you just check the MIC. That will prove it with reasonable reliability.
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You can technically start sniffing away without "connecting" to the network. Terry is correct, if the network is open (no encryption, WEP/WPA/WPA2) then you can just "Join" the network and sniff the traffic. However, you do not need to join the network to sniff the traffic. WLANs use radio frequencies, all you have to do is match the freq (channel) and ...
4
The first step in any sort of MITM attack on a network is connecting to the network. With a wired network, that involves somehow connecting your machine to the network through the use of an Ethernet cable. With a wireless network, you just need to connect to the network.. well, wirelessly. Without a requiring a password to connect to a wireless network, ...
1
Connecting to your bank over any WiFi that you do not absolutely trust is a mistake (in case you have a lot of money, of course). While in theory checking the URL and warnings does provide a level of assurance that you're not being MITM-ed (traffic is not intercepted), there are tools that work most of the time by utilising, for example, homonymic domain ...
11
If your bank Web site uses HTTPS, and you dutifully check that the server name in the URL is indeed the expected name, and you don't disregard warnings about unverified or expired certificates, then yes, it is safe.
If these conditions are not met, then no, it is not safe -- but it would not be safe from anywhere else either. Public WiFi is not special in ...
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Beside the other answers I have to add that even HTTPS isn't 100% secure anymore as sslstrip gets better and better. So, without an VPN you shouldn't connect to sensitive pages. Although often those open WLAN's are only opened to phish data...
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Yes, it is a threat. Not just with open networks, any network owned by someone you don't trust (like mall networks which are secured but provide a password) There are many things they can do:
Read all your unencrypted traffic
Anything you send over an http connection can be read by them. Passwords, usernames, credit card numbers, the works. All of these ...
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Anyone with a wireless card under the signal's radius can join your wireless network. There are many tools that they can use to sniff and even manipulate traffic in your network. Usinf tools like Ettercap, anyone can launch Man In The Middle (MITM) attack where all traffic goes through hacker's laptop/computer before it reaches your devices.
They can use ...
2
Just to state it simply, a common way to hack people is to go to a public place (airport) with a wifi hotspot leave it open or simply impersonate a valid one and wait for people to connect. They can simply listen for any unencrypted data. This basically means you need to be super careful when using a public hotspot...SO careful that it is nearly impossible ...
3
In addition to what other have said, I think it's worth making clear that if you connect to a WiFi with security other than WPA/WPA2-Enterprise, you are vulnerable to sniffing, because all users share the same key (or no key at all if it is unsecured).
That goes against a common misconception that I found many users to have, who believed that using WPA/WPA2 ...
52
Unprotected Wifi networks, particularly in public places, are most certainly a threat. This is because you are connecting to a network without knowing who else could be on the network.
'Free Wifi' provided by cafes, restaurants, etc serve as excellent places for harvesting passwords.
The attacker will perform a Man in the Middle attack, typically by ...
6
Well you are sending everything over untrusted channel. All communication protocols you use on the internet which do not provide an SSL interface (or similar) which also checks for validity (attackers love to perform MITM on free wireless hot spots) can therefore be sniffed and captured. So the minimum what they would be able to see is what websites you are ...
3
The 802.1x protocol is built on multiple steps.
The supplicant (entity who wants to connect) identify the Access point by its SSID as it would do for any wireless network. Be noted that 802.1x also work on traditional wired networks. For what we know, this can be any hardware that provides this SSID, it can be changed, maybe spoofed.
When you are connected ...
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Spread-spectrum emissions are very often used in military and clandestine communications. This is not new, they can be detected and they can be jammed, yet doing so requires some not-so-cheap equipment (for detection, not for jamming) and much more time to integrate the signal. You cannot implement this stuff on top of conventional 802.11 wireless ...
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You need a new air-protocol to make it work (ie: hardware/firmware), but the protocol you are thinking of would use asynchronous CDMA:
Asynchronous CDMA has some level of privacy built in because the signal is spread using a pseudo-random code; this code makes the spread spectrum signals appear random or have noise-like properties. A receiver cannot ...
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When you are using your Wi-Fi your hosts sends wireless signal to communicate. Therefore anyone can intercept those signals. If your signal is undetectable, how come your legitimate hosts would detect the communication?
Wi-Fi signal is like the one you use when you communicate when you speak. The only difference between both is the frequency of the signal. ...
6
No, the spectrum that is used is well-known and not concealed. You can't conceal that activity is occurring, you can only prevent the SSID from being directly broadcast and encrypt the traffic such that the network can not be spied on without breaking the encryption. The fact that there is radio activity in the spectrum will be apparent to anyone listening ...
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It will be rather hard to detect one, because Wi-Fi jammers use the same frequency as Wi-Fi network, you can find more on how those device work here. To be short - they are simple noise generators. Maybe that will help.
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If you just like to detect those jammers - SNR can be measured with tools like kismet, netstumbler, vistumbler.
But keep in mind:
Other WiFi channels will be in your SNR analysis.
A jammer is not the only way to take down a wifi network ;-)
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