Wireless Networks: A Hackers Delight

Most people have no clue how effortless you can hijack a wireless connection since wireless networks are insecure by design. Taking over and exploiting a wireless network is just about as easy as opening your garage door by trial and error using a wide frequency box and driving through the neighborhood to the average hacker.

I laugh at all the people who think they are protected because the wireless network sports 16-46 bit encryption... That may sound great to you if you live in a hole, but you need at least Triple DES (168-bit key) or 128 bit AES encryption before you are up to todays standards. Heck 16 bit is so weak you can almost decrypt it by hand if you had the time...lol

Seriously besides the few dozen people I consult for who I have educated, I would say less then 5\% of computer people know this, and I do not know any non-technical people who know of this huge security hole they introduce into their networks.

Most individuals and enven large organizations such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture in New Orleans make the mistake of trusting the default out of the box settings that are on their wireless equipment, making it as easy as flipping a lightswitch to gain access to that wireless network.

Remember that if you use 128 bit SSL encryption from a web page over a 16 bit encrypted channel, a hacker can easily record your information that is transmitted and decrypt it later in their own time. DES & Triple DES can be broken in a few hours with the proper machine.. at which time they will have your personal information to use at their own whim.

Hell why even wait to break your encryption by recording it this way, many hackers would just put a Trojan on your system, and have your system do the work for them, then e-mail them the key to bypass the encryption. If you share files over a wireless connection, or have a database connection open and active, it will be almost transparent and very easy for even a low level 10 year old hacker to do this.

What's even worse is that you the user that was duped into paying for all this hardware, and your Internet connection is now held criminally and civilly liable for your insecure network. Yes, the wireless network craze is a hackers wet dream. Now hackers can walk to a local Starbucks (who I love), hacking your neighborhood along the way and see automated reports of all their zombie networks under their control without fear of being caught. Then pay for their coffee using your credit card.

References

• Network Wold Fusion: Security issues with ODBC in client/server and wireless nets
• Network Wold Fusion: Serious security weakness in 802.11b wireless LANs exposed
• eWeek: Weakness Reported in Wireless Security Protocol
• SecurityDocs.com: The evolution of wireless security in 802.11 networks: WEP, WPA and 802.11 standards (whitepapers and abstract)
• CNet: Weakness Reported in Wireless Security Protocol
• CNN: Wireless technology presents new security challenges