Alas, wireless Internet may not be the technology sector's salvation after all.
Small companies, some publicly traded, are burning cash trying to turn Wi-Fi into viable business. Some have already shut down.
Faster than you can say "industry bubble," skeptics are asking whether wireless Internet connections will become similar to the wired Internet of the late 1990s -- hot but rarely profitable.
There are several techniques to performing penetration testing on your wireless network, the objective of all of them being to improve the security and integrity of the network itself. What wireless lacks in the security of the physical layer and medium must be compensated for in protections on other layers of the stack. As you'll recall from Part I of this article, there are many different attacks that a nefarious individual can carry out on your wireless network.
Changing just one line of code in the Linux OS could, potentially, allow hackers to monopolise the bandwidth available at 802.11 hotspots. By altering the Multiple Access Control (MAC) protocol, one of the series of protocols that govern how bandwidth is distributed between multiple users of the same wi-fi access point by randomly assigning each hotspot user a rate for data transfer, it is possible to siphon off most or all of the bandwidth. The discovery inspired Imad Aad and his colleagues, of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, to devise a counter-measure.
Greedy computer hackers using open-source Linux machines could steal more than their fair share of bandwidth from Wi-Fi hotspots, Swiss computer scientists have warned.
At the MobiSys 2004 conference in Boston, Massachusetts on Monday, Imad Aad, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, outlined how changing just one line of code in the Linux operating system could allow hackers to monopolise the bandwidth at hotspots using the 802.11 standard.
Libera announced on Tuesday that it is building a new and independent wireless broadband network, using the 28GHz band of the radio spectrum. The first base station, located in Docklands, will go live in July this year and the rest of the Greater London network should be operational by early summer 2005. The company is also planning a national rollout that will eventually be able to reach about 75 percent of UK businesses. Libera will offer business customers broadband capacity of between 1Mbps and 36Mbps. Customers will be able to choose the level of broadband capacity which they want.
From fancy hotels to fast-food joints, the number of venues offering high-speed wireless Internet access is expected to grow at a heady clip this year. But industry analysts aren't expecting laptop users and their credit cards to follow.
Virtual, moving fences controlled from a laptop could one day herd cattle to fresh fields for grazing, a roboticist told the MobiSys 2004 conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on Sunday.
A farmer would control multiple herds from a single server at home as if he were playing a video game, said Zack Butler, of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Those with a vested interest in the future of wireless broadband met here to discuss plans to improve spectrum use and to make way for the wider adoption of the technology.
The very idea of a wireless network introduces multiple venues for attack and penetration that are either much more difficult or completely impossible to execute with a standard, wired network. Wireless networks only know the boundaries of their own signal: streets, parks, nearby buildings, and cars all offer a virtual "port" into your wireless network.
With a laptop perched in the passenger seat of his Toyota 4Runner and a special antenna on the roof, Mike Outmesguine ventured off to sniff out wireless networks between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He got a big whiff of insecurity.
While his 800-mile drive confirmed that the number of wireless networks is growing explosively, he also found that only a third used basic encryption -- a key security measure. In fact, in nearly 40 per cent of the networks not a single change had been made to the gear's wide-open default settings.
