Directional Wi-Fi antenna in a can
p2p news / p2pnet: Ain’t the Net great? You start out at point A and somehow end up at point X without ever touching down in between ; )
We ran an item on Simple Nomad’s revelation that there’s a very dodgy wireless security problem in the Microsoft Wireless Client for laptops using 2000/XP/2003 and via a Reader’s Write (thanks ; ) …
… ended up with a pointer to a directional Wi-Fi antenna in a Pringles can from Lorin Thwaits.
“Yesterday at the Shmoocon conference in Washington DC self-described hacker Mark Loveless reminded us that it’s risky to leave the WiFi enabled on an XP laptop,” says Thwaites “But note that if you’ve got SP2 with the firewall enabled you’re at very low risk.
“While I don’t think this news item will garner nearly as much attention as Mark Russinovich’s discovery the Sony rootkit, it is still good to know.
“What I find particularly annoying is that someone could do a drive-by with a high-powered WAP set with the same SSID as a given company uses. One of those high-gain directional antennas you can make out of a Pringles can would be optimal for something like this. Any of the systems in a company that don’t use a firewall solution could then be open to attack.
“Moral of the story: If you’re going out in the rain then please put on your galoshes!”
Also See:
very dodgy – Dangerous Windows wireless flaw , January 17, 2006
Lorin Thwaits – Who’s got your SSID? (WiFi exploit), January 17, 2005
