Wireless Popularity 2: Security Concerns, Continued
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In this second article of a three-part series on wireless security issues, Michael Swanson discusses issues particular to certain environments (such as university campuses) and examines some of the solutions.
Introduction
In the previous article in this series, I addressed many of the security concerns facing wireless networking. I described how many protocols transmit information in plaintext by default, and how this presents a particular problem when dealing with wireless networking, because wireless signals are relatively easy to intercept. In this article, I will endeavor to present some further solutions to these problems that may help preserve security for people accessing the Internet through a wireless gateway.
Public Access Points
While wireless encryption schemes, like WPA or WEP, are useful for home users or businesses where the key can be distributed to end users through some other means than direct transmission across RF, it is far more difficult to implement in a public access environment. For instance, when connecting to a wireless gateway situated in a café or hotel, it is impossible to distribute an encryption key in a secure way such that a malicious hacker couldn’t easily gain access to it.
In these places, WEP and WPA do not solve the security problems. Because of their public nature, these hotspots are prime targets for hackers to learn personal information about someone. This presents a particular difficulty in light of the problem presented in the last article, regarding the plaintext nature of most popular Internet protocols.
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