[Chester LUG] WiFi Terror

[Michael Crilly]

Nothing surprises me these days.

On 13/07/11 16:29, Les Pritchard wrote:
> You've hit the nail on the head there security vs convenience. I have 
> been to so many companies who use WEP because they know it will work 
> with all devices. They also use a simple key as something longer is 
> just harder to type :-)
>
> I've also spoken to home users who use WEP, or nothing at all as 
> they've had problems connecting consoles to WPA2. Very scary.
>
> On 13 July 2011 16:24, Michael Crilly <mrcrilly at gmail.com 
> <mailto:mrcrilly at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I believe WPA is backwards compatible with WEP enabled hardware
>     (but not WPA2 as the chipsets can't do the processing). WPA is an
>     improvement over WEP as it uses better encryption, it doesn't
>     directly use master keys and it's IV has been increased to 48,
>     from 24, and as such you have trillions of key combinations,
>     instead of about 17 million. WPA2 requires completely new hardware.
>
>     I think ISPs should be taking on the responsibility of ensuring
>     people's security, as far as wireless technology at home goes,
>     anyway. This can be done by shipping wireless routers with only
>     WPA2 enabled, minimum key requirements and a decent password
>     policy on the router's administration panel, etc. That being said
>     it can't be too easy as you end up sacrificing security for
>     convenience, which is never good.
>
>
>     On 13/07/11 16:15, Bryn Salisbury wrote:
>
>         The question for me is whether or not older units in
>         circulation have been updated to support WPA2. I know that
>         there are still a load of 1st generation BT Home Hubs out
>         there which still work on WEP, and the other question is how
>         often people update their wifi passwords (I bet most
>         provider-issued devices are still set to their factory
>         WEP/WPA2 keys).
>
>         Buzz Out Loud did a long segment about Wifi routers a few
>         weeks ago, and my recent (painful) experience trying to
>         reconfigure my own HomeHub made me wonder how many 'normal'
>         people actually look (or even know they should look) at such
>         things?
>
>         B
>
>         On 13 Jul 2011, at 16:10, Michael Crilly wrote:
>
>
>             Mind you most residential gateways come with WPA2 as
>             standard now (the article was a few years back), so
>             hopefully this will not be as easy to do.
>
>             On 13/07/11 16:08, Les Pritchard wrote:
>
>                 Yes that's a great story, there's a lot of this going
>                 on sadly. If you've upset anyone - don't use WiFi :-)
>
>                 On 13 July 2011 15:23, Michael
>                 Crilly<mrcrilly at gmail.com <mailto:mrcrilly at gmail.com>>
>                  wrote:
>                 I've just started reading this on Arstechnica:
>                 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/wifi-hacking-neighbor-from-hell-gets-18-years-in-prison.ars
>                 - quite scary! It just goes to show you what you can
>                 do with some tools off of the Internet and some basic
>                 knowledge.
>
>                 This could be a story for your company's website, Les ;-)
>
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>         --
>         Bryn Salisbury
>         http://about.me/bryns/bio
>
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