Entries Tagged "wireless"

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WiFi Driver Attack

In this attack, you can seize control of someone’s computer using his WiFi interface, even if he’s not connected to a network.

The two researchers used an open-source 802.11 hacking tool called LORCON (Loss of Radio Connectivity) to throw an extremely large number of wireless packets at different wireless cards. Hackers use this technique, called fuzzing, to see if they can cause programs to fail, or perhaps even run unauthorized software when they are bombarded with unexpected data.

Using tools like LORCON, Maynor and Ellch were able to discover many examples of wireless device driver flaws, including one that allowed them to take over a laptop by exploiting a bug in an 802.11 wireless driver. They also examined other networking technologies including Bluetooth, Ev-Do (EVolution-Data Only), and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).

The two researchers declined to disclose the specific details of their attack before the August 2 presentation, but they described it in dramatic terms.

“This would be the digital equivalent of a drive-by shooting,” said Maynor. An attacker could exploit this flaw by simply sitting in a public space and waiting for the right type of machine to come into range.

The victim would not even need to connect to a network for the attack to work.

No details yet. The researchers are presenting their results at BlackHat on August 2.

Posted on July 6, 2006 at 1:52 PM • View Comments

Schneier Asks to Be Hacked

Maybe I shouldn’t have said this:

“I have a completely open Wi-Fi network,” Schneier told ZDNet UK. “Firstly, I don’t care if my neighbors are using my network. Secondly, I’ve protected my computers. Thirdly, it’s polite. When people come over they can use it.”

For the record, I have an ultra-secure wireless network that automatically reports all hacking attempts to unsavory men with bitey dogs.

Posted on June 28, 2006 at 1:23 PM • View Comments

WiFi Tracking

“…a few hundred meters away….”

Forget RFID. Well, don’t, but National Scientific Corporation has a prototype of a WiFi tagging system that, like RFID, lets you track things in real-time and space. The advantage that the WiFi Tracker system has over passive RFID tracking is that you can keep tabs on objects with WiFi Tracker tags (which can hold up to 256K of data) from as far as a few hundred meters away (the range of passive RFID taggers is just a few meters). While you can do something similar with active RFID tags, with WiFi Tracker companies can use their pre-existing WiFi network to track things rather than having to build a whole new RFID system.

In other news, Apple is adding WiFi to the iPod.

And, of course, you can be tracked from your cellphone:

But the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have seized on the ability to
locate a cellular customer and are using it to track Americans’ whereabouts
surreptitiously—even when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.

A pair of court decisions in the last few weeks shows that judges are split
on whether this is legal. One federal magistrate judge in Wisconsin on Jan.
17 ruled it was unlawful, but another nine days later in Louisiana decided
that it was perfectly OK.

This is an unfortunate outcome, not least because it shows that some judges
are reluctant to hold federal agents and prosecutors to the letter of the
law.

It’s also unfortunate because it demonstrates that the FBI swore never to
use a 1994 surveillance law to track cellular phones—but then, secretly,
went ahead and did it, anyway.

Posted on February 14, 2006 at 1:29 PM • View Comments

Wireless Dead Drop

Dead drops have gone high tech:

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has opened an investigation into a spying device discovered in Moscow, the service said Monday.

The FSB said it had confiscated a fake rock containing electronic equipment used for espionage on January 23, and had uncovered a ring of four British spies who worked under diplomatic cover, funding human rights organizations operating in Russia.

BBC had this to say:

The old idea of the dead-drop (‘letterboxes’ the British tend to call them) – by the oak tree next to the lamppost in such-and-such a park etc – has given way to hand-held computers and short-range transmitters.

Just transmit your info at the rock and your ‘friends’ will download it next day. No need for codes and wireless sets at midnight anymore.

Transferring information to and from spies has always been risky. It’s interesting to see modern technology help with this problem.

Phil Karn wrote to me in e-mail:

My first reaction: what a clever idea! It’s about time spycraft went hi-tech. I’d like to know if special hardware was used, or if it was good old 802.11. Special forms of spread-spectrum modulation and oddball frequencies could make the RF hard to detect, but then your spies run the risk of being caught with highly specialized hardware. 802.11 is almost universal, so it’s inherently less suspicious. Randomize your MAC address, change the SSID frequently and encrypt at multiple layers. Store sensitive files encrypted, without headers, in the free area of a laptop’s hard drive so they’re not likely to be found in forensic analysis. Keep all keys physically separate from encrypted data.

Even better, hide your wireless dead drop in plain sight by making it an open, public access point with an Internet connection so the sight of random people loitering with open laptops won’t be at all unusual.

To keep the counterespionage people from wiretapping the hotspot’s ISP and performing traffic analysis, hang a PC off the access point and use it as a local drop box so the communications in question never go to the ISP.

I am reminded of a dead drop technique used by, I think, the 9/11 terrorists. They used Hotmail (or some other anonymous e-mail service) accounts, but instead of e-mailing messages to each other, one would save a message as “draft” and the recipient would retrieve it from the same account later. I thought that was pretty clever, actually.

Posted on January 31, 2006 at 7:17 AM • View Comments

Sniffing Passwords is Easy

From InfoWorld:

She said about half the hotels use shared network media (i.e., a hub versus an Ethernet switch), so any plain text password you transmit is sniffable by any like-minded person in the hotel. Most wireless access points are shared media as well; even networks requiring a WEP key often allow the common users to sniff each other’s passwords.

She said the average number of passwords collected in an overnight hotel stay was 118, if you throw out the 50 percent of connections that used an Ethernet switch and did not broadcast passwords.

The vast majority, 41 percent, were HTTP-based passwords, followed by e-mail (SMTP, POP2, IMAP) at 40 percent. The last 19 percent were composed of FTP, ICQ, SNMP, SIP, Telnet, and a few other types.

As a security professional, my friend often attends security conferences and teaches security classes. She noted that the number of passwords she collected in these venues was higher on average than in non-security locations. The very people who are supposed to know more about security than anyone appeared to have a higher-than-normal level of remote access back to their companies, but weren’t using any type of password protection.

At one conference, she listened to one of the world’s foremost Cisco security experts as his laptop broadcast 12 different log-in types and passwords during the presentation. Ouch!

I am interested in analyzing that password database. What percentage of those passwords are English words? What percentage are in the common password dictionaries? What percentage use mixed case, or numbers, or punctuation? What’s the frequency distribution of different password lengths?

Real password data is hard to come by. There’s an interesting research paper in that data.

Posted on November 9, 2005 at 2:39 PM • View Comments

A 24/7 Wireless Tracking Network

It’s at MIT:

MIT’s newly upgraded wireless network—extended this month to cover the entire school—doesn’t merely get you online in study halls, stairwells or any other spot on the 9.4 million square foot campus. It also provides information on exactly how many people are logged on at any given location at any given time.

It even reveals a user’s identity if the individual has opted to make that data public.

MIT researchers did this by developing electronic maps that track across campus, day and night, the devices people use to connect to the network, whether they’re laptops, wireless PDAs or even Wi-Fi equipped cell phones.

WiFi is certainly a good technology for this sort of massive surveillance. It’s an open and well-standardized technology that allows anyone to go into the surveillance business. Bluetooth is a similar technology: open and easy to use. Cell phone technologies, on the other hand, are closed and proprietary. RFID might be the preferred surveillance technology of the future, depending on how open and standardized it becomes.

Whatever the technology, privacy is a serious concern:

While every device connected to the campus network via Wi-Fi is visible on the constantly refreshed electronic maps, the identity of the users is confidential unless they volunteer to make it public.

Those students, faculty and staff who opt in are essentially agreeing to let others track them.

“This raises some serious privacy issues,” Ratti said. “But where better than to work these concerns out but on a research campus?”

Rich Pell, a 21-year-old electrical engineering senior from Spartanburg, S.C., was less than enthusiastic about the new system’s potential for people monitoring. He predicted not many fellow students would opt into that.

“I wouldn’t want all my friends and professors tracking me all the time. I like my privacy,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone who would think that’s a good idea. Everyone wants to be out of contact now and then.”

Posted on November 4, 2005 at 12:44 PM • View Comments

Wireless Interception Distance Records

Don’t believe wireless distance limitations. Again and again they’re proven wrong.

At DefCon earlier this month, a group was able to set up an unamplified 802.11 network at a distance of 124.9 miles.

The record holders relied on more than just a pair of wireless laptops. The equipment required for the feat, according to the event website, included a “collection of homemade antennas, surplus 12 foot satellite dishes, home-welded support structures, scaffolds, ropes and computers”.

Bad news for those of us who rely on physical distance to secure our wireless networks.

Even more important, the world record for communicating with a passive RFID device was set at 69 feet. (Pictures here.) Remember that the next time someone tells you that it’s impossible to read RFID identity cards at a distance.

Whenever you hear a manufacturer talk about a distance limitation for any wireless technology—wireless LANs, RFID, Bluetooth, anything—assume he’s wrong. If he’s not wrong today, he will be in a couple of years. Assume that someone who spends some money and effort building more sensitive technology can do much better, and that it will take less money and effort over the years. Technology always gets better; it never gets worse. If something is difficult and expensive now, it will get easier and cheaper in the future.

Posted on August 8, 2005 at 1:37 PM • View Comments

Security Risks of Airplane WiFi

I’ve already written about the stupidity of worrying about cell phones on airplanes. Now the Department of Homeland Security is worried about broadband Internet.

Federal law enforcement officials, fearful that terrorists will exploit emerging in-flight broadband services to remotely activate bombs or coordinate hijackings, are asking regulators for the power to begin eavesdropping on any passenger’s internet use within 10 minutes of obtaining court authorization.

In joint comments filed with the FCC last Tuesday, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned that a terrorist could use on-board internet access to communicate with confederates on other planes, on the ground or in different sections of the same plane—all from the comfort of an aisle seat.

“There is a short window of opportunity in which action can be taken to thwart a suicidal terrorist hijacking or remedy other crisis situations on board an aircraft, and law enforcement needs to maximize its ability to respond to these potentially lethal situations,” the filing reads.

Terrorists never use SSH, after all. (I suppose that’s the next thing the DHS is going to try to ban.)

Posted on July 14, 2005 at 12:02 PM • View Comments

Stealing WiFi Access

Interesting:

Police have arrested a man for using someone else’s wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.

Near as I can tell, there was no other criminal activity involved. The man who used someone else’s wireless wasn’t doing anything wrong it it; he was just using the Internet.

Posted on July 13, 2005 at 12:39 PM • View Comments

Sandia's New Wireless Technology

When dumb PR agents happen to good organizations:

Sandia Develops Secure Ultrawideband Wireless Network

The newly developed ultrawideband network, said the researchers at Sandia, is compatible with existing Internet protocols, which means that current Internet applications will be able to use standard transmission techniques and even high-level encryption up to and beyond 256 bits….

The newly developed network, said the researchers, is compatible with existing Internet protocols, which means that current Internet applications will be able to use standard transmission techniques and even high-level encryption up to and beyond 256 bits, which is currently double the amount considered essential for secure Internet transactions.

Wow. 256 is a lot of bits. I wonder where they put them all.

Posted on June 29, 2005 at 12:54 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.