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Hi
Was chatting on irc the otherday when two people started a conversation. One of them said "i have a 8dbi omni & 13dbi patch on my roof". There were also talking about pickup unsecure networks with this on.
What are they? Am i in danger of them "hacking" etc. Are they legal?
Any tips and comments appreciated.
Hi there,
The ownership of antennas (which is what they are talking about) is not illegal in itself.
As far as picking up unsecured networks, it depends on the legal environment of the country in which you are. It can be compared to a thief walking into a house with an open door. There is no breaking and entry, but it is still illegal to go in and take in stuff.
In terms of your safety, if your network is secured and encrypted, you're not at risk immediately. However, you could consider adding MAC address filtering to your setup to make it even less attractive for others to even knock on your door.
That's the short of the story.
Cheers,
BrainStop
Brainstop you going to have to elaborate with the Mac address filtering. I aint a Computer guru yet, still in training.
Another thing, is there a plus for someone like me purchasing one. The price that these guys were talking about was R140 which is about $20.
Thanks for the reply.
Hi Cider,
I'll start with the easy question. If you have no trouble with your wireless network at the moment, there's no need to purchase an additional antenna. The only thing that this would do is increase the strength of the signal.
As for MAC address filtering, a MAC address is the physical address of your network card. I'm attaching a screenshot with a sample. It's the number highlighted with the red box. Each network card in the world has a different address. The first part actually identifies the manufacturer, followed by a unique identifier.
If you connect to your wireless router, you should have an area in the security setup for "MAC address filtering". In this, you would specify the addresses of your network cards. As a result, only cards with those addresses will be allowed to connect.
Let me know if you need more info.
Cheers,
BrainStop
Brilliant information. Thanks brain :D
Anyone who knows the difference between the various types of antennae will not have any difficulty bypassing MAC based authentication.Quote:
Originally Posted by BrainStop
Just to stitch this up the 13dbi patch is used to find 2.4Ghz devices which 802.11 b/g WAPs operate at. Same goes with the 8bdi omni (meaning its signal spans 360 degrees).
That said, these devices are normally used for point-to-point bridging of wireless networks, however, in this case, they are being used to expand the range of coverage these clowns have to pickup on insecure APs.
On a final note, you can build your own antenna using things such as a pringles can. What these tools are doing is actually buying the gear instead of building their own. This technique is nothing new and there are ways to combat hijacking the antenna. It's important to note that MAC auth is not robust enough (on its own) to prevent hijacking. You need several additional layers of protection but I'm sure you have enough catching up to do before you get into that level of detail.
--TH13
Thehorse: you have to explain the pringles can. That just caught my eye.
Thanks for the replies
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448Quote:
Originally Posted by Cider
Cheers:
And of course the intent of this is:
However, as you can see, it can be used for other not-so-nice purposes.Quote:
Over a clear line of sight, with short antenna cable runs, a 12db to 12db can-to-can shot should be able to carry an 11Mbps link well over ten miles.
--TH13
Very interesting, thanks for that link.