Wireless

Most people who have wireless Ethernet at home, or the office, connect to the wireless network by attaching to a wireless Access Point, or AP. This method of wireless networking is called "Infrastructure Mode". If you have a secure wireless network configured in "Infrastructure Mode" you are using MAC address filtering, some level of encryption, and have made some additional changes to your AP in order to prevent just anyone from using it or capturing data.

The other day I sat down at my home computer, an iMac, and clicked on the Microsoft Word document where I keep all my important data: passwords, code numbers, URLs for work-related websites, and, of course, credit card numbers. But something weird happened when I tried to open it. I saw a message that read: "File is in use by another user." What could "another user" mean, I wondered? Could someone have hacked his way onto my machine? Slowly, I pieced together what could be going on. Someone might have remotely accessed my computer and read my personal records.

More than a third of the nation is still ignorant about wireless technology, according to research published on Thursday.

Forty percent of respondents to a Freedom2Surf survey didn't understand what Wi-Fi technology was, although the overwhelming majority of those surveyed who were aged between 16 and 24 claimed to know about it. Thirty percent of this group used high-speed wireless networks for Internet access more than once a week.

The city of Philadelphia will become the largest U.S. Internet "hot spot" next year under a plan to offer wireless access at about half the cost charged by commercial operators, city officials said Thursday. Last year, officials unveiled a pilot scheme offering users of Wi-Fi-enabled computers access to the Internet within a radius of about a mile of downtown's Love Park. Thursday's announcement expands the network to the city's entire 135-square-mile area, marking a U.S. first.

Millions of wireless access points are spread across the US and the world. About 70% percent of these access points are unprotected—wide open to access by anyone who happens to drive by. The other 30% are protected by WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and a small handful are protected by the new WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard. At a recent ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) meeting in Los Angeles, a team of FBI agents demonstrated current WEP-cracking techniques and broke a 128 bit WEP key in about three minutes.

Wireless LAN security has come a long way in the past few years. 802.11's initial, flawed encryption standard, WEP, has been replaced by WPA and 802.11i, and a slew of new wireless security products have recently entered the market.

The problem is that most of these products, such as WLAN switches and rogue access point (AP) monitors, target the large enterprise market, while the majority of new wireless users actually fall into the SOHO (small office, home office) category.

Wireless LANs utilize radio waves for transporting information, which results in security vulnerabilities that justifiably worry network managers. To assuage those worries, most companies implement authentication and encryption to harden security.

Even after two years of WPA certification and nearly one year after 802.11i ratification, you might be wondering why I’m still talking about WEP encryption. The fact is, I would love to stop talking about it if there weren’t such an overwhelming percentage of corporations, retail outlets, and hospitals still using WEP. Although WPA brought us TKIP (think of TKIP as WEP 2.0) encryption and 802.11i brought us AES encryption, the upgrade process has been extremely painful and many products still don’t support TKIP let alone AES.

Companies looking to introduce the 802.1x security protocol may find the move more expensive than they thought, according to a newly published report by Forrester.

The analyst firm found that teething problems with the technology are causing companies to slow their implementation of the standard. Only 15 per cent of North American companies are building in 802.1x switches because of unexpected costs.

"The 802.1x authentication protocol is an essential component of Lan technology and ultimately will save enterprises money," said Forrester senior analyst Robert Whiteley.

The lack of security in wireless networks represents a serious threat to businesses that have not taken measures to protect themselves against those who can easily tap into the Wi-Fi systems being deployed in private and public locations.