[Gllug] News: Two cautioned over WiFi theft

[Richard Jones]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 09:53:45AM +0100, Peter Childs wrote:
> On 18/04/07, Gundemarie Scholz <spamyousilly at inbox.ru> wrote:
> > Richard Jones wrote:
> > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/6565079.stm
> > >
> > >   "The man arrested at the weekend was cautioned for dishonestly
> > >   obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid
> > >   payment."
> >
> > "While not totally secure, WEP keys do at least provide a modicum of
> > security to thwart all but the most technically-literate hackers."
> >
> > Hmm, considering the fact that it is now possible to crack WEP in less
> > than a minute I wouldn't want to support that opinion any more.
> >
> > http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/87874 (German) pointing to
> > http://www.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/aircrack-ptw/ (English) and
> > http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/120.pdf (English)
> >
> > Regards,
> > Gunde
> > --
> > Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
> > http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug
> >
> 
> How about telling your router only to hand access (ie dhcp) out to
> known wifi mac addresses. Ie totally open Wifi if the router knows
> your mac address. No good for visitors but then visitors can always
> talk to you and you can add the relevant mac using the routes config
> page. [...]

An attacker can trivially sniff MAC addresses, and change their own
MAC address to match.  In fact any sensible attacker does this anyway
in order to cover their tracks in case someone is logging MAC
addresses.  The only thing this buys you is user confusion and
configuration hassles.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat
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