Feds Label Wi-Fi a Terrorist Tool

[phishphreek]

Original Article here

SANTA CLARA, California -- Attention, Wi-Fi users: The Department of Homeland Security sees wireless networking technology as a terrorist threat.

"Homeland Security is putting people in place who will be in a position to say, 'If you're going to get broken into ... we're going to start regulating,'" said Cable and Wireless security architect Shannon Myers in a panel dubbed "Homeland Security vs. Wi-Fi."

You've got to be kidding me. How in the hell do they think that they can regulate wireless networks? They have a hard enough time regulating their own networks...

Are they going to drive down every street looking for Wi-Fi signals using pringles cans for antennas?

I have heard of so many people that want to do wireless in their houses. I discourage them as much as possible. Their main reason is so they don't have to run wires. I told them, forget wireless, I'll help you run the wires.

Main reason... I live near an apartment complex and all I have to do it take my laptop to the back yard and I have internet... and I don't even have a WAP on my network. Some goof in the apartments doesn't know what the hell they are doing. Now tell me why someone in an apartment needs a WAP? I mean, a 50ft cable would do just fine! Unless of course they like people using the internet they pay for.

[IchNiSan]

Well, regulation is certainly a major step, and could be a harsh one.

I do not think that and regulation should be put upon regular consumers, i.e. someone who wants a wireless network in their home, but.....

Producers of wireless devices probably should be forced to produce secure devices. Although, no one has yet to write a law forcing microsoft to produce secure products.

Wireless equipement manufactures put out devices which use the WEP standards, a standard which has been broken since very shortly after it was started.

Any wireless access point which is encrypted using WEP(Wired Equivalence Protocol) is just asking to be broken into. It takes under five hours of collecting data from a standard WEP enabled access point in order to crack the key and gain access to that particular network, due to a major flaw in WEP.

Any corporation running WEP alone for its wireless networks is just asking for a major security problem. There are currently several different ways to increase the security of wireless networks(EAP MD5, EAP TLS, EAP TTLS) and companies which do not use any of them are just plain stupid. Some of these are a major nightmare to workwith, EAP MD5 uses fairly secure encryption, but requires administrative support for adding and device to the network, EAP TLS offers good security by way of client and server certificates but also requires major administrative support, EAP TTLS involves server certificates only with authentication using other means encrypted by the certificates, but, is not fully supported by all the nescessary equipement and authentication servers(RADIUS).