WEP Security Alert

[oast]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

Just because you're uneducated about a subject

I am not uneducated.. you don't know me, so don't assume, please. Thank you.

Originally Posted by SirMoby

does that mean that those of us that are educated are paranoid?

The wrong education can lead to paranoia. In a lot of cases it is the cause.

The FBI demonstration (conducted over a year ago, BTW) used exagerted traffic loads to break the code in 3 minutes. Traffic FAR beyond the norm of a household or even small business. The amount of "normal" data that needs to be 'sniffed' to get access to a network would take hours (maybe days on a slower-moving, average, home network).

Would you sit outside a house for hours (or days) in the hope that the network was hackable? Then... assuming it was... that they had some information worth stealing? I don't think so.

[Pazz]

Originally Posted by oast

The FBI demonstration (conducted over a year ago, BTW) used exagerted traffic loads to break the code in 3 minutes. Traffic FAR beyond the norm of a household or even small business. The amount of "normal" data that needs to be 'sniffed' to get access to a network would take hours (maybe days on a slower-moving, average, home network).

Would you sit outside a house for hours (or days) in the hope that the network was hackable?

Not true as it kind of says in the article. The sole purpose of Aireplay is to flood the network with 1000's of packets so that Airodump can capture what it needs. What may have taken days or weeks can be done easy in minutes (normally under an hour).

WPA is crackable the same way it just takes longer. If you want security go with 802.11x or wire

Originally Posted by oast

Then... assuming it was... that they had some information worth stealing? I don't think so.

I would say it's not often the case the someone wants to hack you to find your little secrets (personal or business), it's more like they are looking for free internet or a means to use you connection as a relay for other dastardly deeds.

[Useless]

For the average home, I agree with Oast. I'm far from concerned about my neighbors cracking their way in. And as far as pros driving around seeking out signals, I can walk my laptop out to my sidewalk and lose signal, so I'm not worried. If I lived in an apartment building with a bunch of strangers, I'd probably be more concerned.

I use WPA-PSK, not WEP, on an 802.g network if anyone wants to pull a drive-by. My house is the one with the with rusted tin porch roof.

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by oast

Would you sit outside a house for hours (or days) in the hope that the network was hackable?

Why would you even ask such an amazingly stupid question? I have a job, a family, friends and much better things to do. Silly Brits crack me up

Educated hackers narrow the times of attacks depending on what they want. Most home banking is done between the hours of 6:30 and 8:00PM on the east coast and towards the end of the month. Most office work that's done from homes occurs after 9:00PM.

[lassiter]

Originally Posted by oast

The FBI demonstration (conducted over a year ago, BTW) used exagerted traffic loads to break the code in 3 minutes. Traffic FAR beyond the norm of a household or even small business. The amount of "normal" data that needs to be 'sniffed' to get access to a network would take hours (maybe days on a slower-moving, average, home network).

A teen hacker running the right brute-force software on his hijacked network of 10,000+ unfirewalled PCs could probably accomplish the task fairly quickly.

Ever looked at raw weblogs of a hacker attack? One hacker running a brute force password attempt on one of my (now-defunct) paysites was sending around 1,000 hits per minute, nonstop for around 36 hours, from several thousand different IPs worldwide. You don't need to be parked outside with a single laptop - you just need the target IP address and a network of compromised machines aimed at it.